First off, this was much more grim than I was expecting! But then, for some reason I was expecting a sappy teenage love story, and with the space bat..Show More »tle and all the desperate fights to save a spaceship and survive captivity, there wasn’t time! All in all? This is what happens when space colonists meet the boys from Lord of the Flies and a crazy baby cult. Not a lot of clear thinking, lots of pressure, and plenty of room for disaster.


The plot switches between Waverly and Kieran’s points of view, each with its own narrator – both of whom read very well, by the way. They’re about sixteen, and as the oldest girl and boy on a space voyage that will take nearly a century, they thought their lives were all mapped out. That all changes the day their spaceship unexpectedly catches up to the one that left ahead of them.

I really enjoyed hearing the details about life aboard the ships. The gardens and orchards, everyone’s jobs, what they ate, how day-to-day life went, that sort of thing. As always with sci-fi, I found myself picking out small details that couldn’t be true, but that’s almost part of the fun for me. Another reviewer mentioned that the adults on this voyage were like “lemmings,” and there were several times I had to agree! Perhaps life in a small, enclosed community breeds naiveté? Interestingly, while Waverly and Kieran are clearly marked as the main characters, I found Kieran to be much less interesting than the other boys on the ship. He’s too weak and spoiled. But then, this isn’t a story about perfect people. In fact, it’s clear the whole time that human flaws are what drive everything about the storyline! By the end of the book it’s hard to tell who to trust, up to and including the main characters.

For a book marketed towards adolescents there are some seriously adult issues floating around. The rights of the individual vs. the rights of a group, procreative rights, the role of religion in society, morality, organized religion vs. cult behavior… And the interesting thing is that the answers aren’t all spelled out. For example, we see religion used for horrible purposes, religion used for good purposes, and then are given pause to wonder, “Wait, is that what’s really going on?” I was almost turned off when for a moment it looked like a strong dose of Sunday School was going to descend on the story and simplistically save the day, but that’s not what ended up happening at all. The day is not yet saved, simplistically or otherwise, and while religion is definitely an element, it’s not clear which way the chips will fall by the end of the trilogy.

The book ends at a reasonable stopping point, but also sees things running headlong toward a new conflict. The characters are all in desperate situations, and each one is reacting differently. There is a lot of story left to tell, and I’m interested to see how this plays out. Not quite riveted, but interested. There may be more going on under the surface than I was expecting!

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