Record of a Spaceborn Few starts off with a major crisis aboard the Exodan fleet - a group of generation ships bearing the ancestors of humans who left Earth to escape environmental catastrophe, now orbiting a star given to them by the Aeluons and grappling with their existential purpose. But the start of the book is anticlimactic, with the crisis very much in the background - sort of like the destruction of Praxis setting the stage for the Khitomer Accords in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Each of the perspective characters in this book (and there are several) is influenced in subtle and not-so-subtle ways by the crisis, but you also get the sense that the questions they grapple with were coming for a long time.

The exploration of Exodan life and society through the eyes of various individuals is enjoyable if not exactly suspenseful. Overall I found it an enjoyable read and I thought Chambers stuck the landing well in the final pages.