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A review by eiion
Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh
3.5
Loving anything is bound to the pain of losing it.
This was a good book, but some pretty glaring flaws and frustrations just made it miss the mark a little too much.
This book is about a group of 5 children who are trained for most of their lives to be sent to a place called 'Terra-Two' - an Earth-like planet capable of supporting life where they are going to be sent to establish humanity on this planet as well. Putting aside the obvious ethics concerns and the fact that no governement would ever fund this one way trip just to have a few babies on another planet, it had an interesting premise. But this book did expect me to suspend a decent amount of disbelief, and some of it was just not easy.
For one: Whoever is in charge of the psychiatric assessments for this program needs to be fired and then never allowed to work with children ever again. These were the least adjusted teenagers that have ever been featured in a book. A suicide the day before launch, constant bullying and comparing themselves to each other, one of them having prophetic dreams that was sending her into basically religious psychosis, and then one of the teens literally almost murdering another one in the airlock over a dispute about a video game. I know very well that 18 year olds can be BRUTAL, but this was a little much. I am a lot worried about all of them! It was just a really really bad mix of a bunch of kids without developed brains being sent into the depths of space for months that was going to turn into 23 years. Yeah, I just don't know what the psych department expected. And the adults that were on board were absolutely 0 help at all. "Oh, they'll figure it out" doesn't work when I think they're all losing their minds.
Despite all of that craziness, the plot was still really touching, and ended up going a completely different direction than I thought it would, probably for the best. I'm glad it ended where it did, even if it wasn't what I expected. I cried, I'll admit it, and there were parts of that book that just absolutely floored me. It was so well written, it was so touching, and if you looked past the very surface level "children losing their minds plot" I think you'll find a book full of metaphor, full of commentary about our human experience, our ties to Earth, and what it means to love something. I found this book to be just so beautiful, that it somehow made up for all of the flaws.
Was it perfect? Not by any means. But if you're looking for emotional sci-fi, it works. You have to be willing to look past the fact that all of these kids desperately need some recreational weed and just sink into the story, but if you can do that, it's worth it.
This book is about a group of 5 children who are trained for most of their lives to be sent to a place called 'Terra-Two' - an Earth-like planet capable of supporting life where they are going to be sent to establish humanity on this planet as well. Putting aside the obvious ethics concerns and the fact that no governement would ever fund this one way trip just to have a few babies on another planet, it had an interesting premise. But this book did expect me to suspend a decent amount of disbelief, and some of it was just not easy.
For one: Whoever is in charge of the psychiatric assessments for this program needs to be fired and then never allowed to work with children ever again. These were the least adjusted teenagers that have ever been featured in a book. A suicide the day before launch, constant bullying and comparing themselves to each other, one of them having prophetic dreams that was sending her into basically religious psychosis, and then one of the teens literally almost murdering another one in the airlock over a dispute about a video game. I know very well that 18 year olds can be BRUTAL, but this was a little much. I am a lot worried about all of them! It was just a really really bad mix of a bunch of kids without developed brains being sent into the depths of space for months that was going to turn into 23 years. Yeah, I just don't know what the psych department expected. And the adults that were on board were absolutely 0 help at all. "Oh, they'll figure it out" doesn't work when I think they're all losing their minds.
Despite all of that craziness, the plot was still really touching, and ended up going a completely different direction than I thought it would, probably for the best. I'm glad it ended where it did, even if it wasn't what I expected. I cried, I'll admit it, and there were parts of that book that just absolutely floored me. It was so well written, it was so touching, and if you looked past the very surface level "children losing their minds plot" I think you'll find a book full of metaphor, full of commentary about our human experience, our ties to Earth, and what it means to love something. I found this book to be just so beautiful, that it somehow made up for all of the flaws.
Was it perfect? Not by any means. But if you're looking for emotional sci-fi, it works. You have to be willing to look past the fact that all of these kids desperately need some recreational weed and just sink into the story, but if you can do that, it's worth it.