A book club pick ;)

I’ve been struggling with myself how to rate this. Four stars was way too generous… Three stars was way too harsh – but maybe not entirely unfair.

The premise is great: a space mission that is humanity’s last hope; a near future Earth full of environmental disasters and global conflict; cool future technology; things go badly wrong and there is a traitor onboard; the crew has to investigate and save the mission.

I liked the latter half of the book, because of all the danger, drama, excitement and whodunit. The pages flew by, rapidly and satisfyingly. Alpha the ship AI was cool.

Are you sensing a “but”? Yes, I do have quite a few of those:

I couldn’t connect to any of the characters. They felt flat and uninteresting. Asuka, I am sorry, but I want more from my main characters than an inferiority complex the size of the known universe and memories of past traumas.

The whole crew selection process? All right, you take a bunch of talented twelve-year-olds, put them into a boarding school and train them for many years. If they (some of them, at least) are to be a spaceship crew, should not cooperation skills be one of the priorities? Not an one-on-one academic battle royale, with rankings? This was possibly the reason so many of the spaceship crew were crumbling so nicely under pressure. Also, there was no difference, personality- and maturity-wise, between the characters at twelve etc and the characters as adults. Annoying!

The mystery was too easy! I guessed the villain (villainness ;) ) about halfway through the book (not all the details, though).

The author said in the acknowledgments that some of the mistakes in physics were intentional. Nice save, but it doesn’t mean that this reader can’t be annoyed. There is suspension of disbelief in sci-fi and suspension of disbelief in near future sci-fi ;) Hmmm, they are supposed to reach Planet X in 20 years. So, I am assuming something like light speed, unless they are using fusion rockets (speculative future technology) and are going to Proxima Centauri, our nearest star. It’s not mentioned where the heck Planet X is, so let’s say it’s not Proxima Centauri. Anyway, the crew has been hibernating for 10 years, they wake up, and lo and behold, ten years have passed on Earth. Isn’t that convenient? There is also lovely instantaneous communication with Earth, using quantum computers (just add quantum – well, at least it was done better here than in Spaceman of Bohemia). For some reason, they only have one onboard and no backup plan for communication when more shit hits the fan. Who planned this mission???

My other “buts” are mostly spoiler territory, so I think I’ll save them for the book club meeting.

There were flashes of promise in this debut novel, however. I might try this author’s other books in the future. ( )

There's much I liked in The Deep Sky, and some bits I did not. I'll start negative first since my final conclusion is positive. First is the premise, which has many parts: A number of nations are brought together by a billionaire to launch a voyage to another star. A "big brother" style competition to determine the crew occupies national attention for a decade. All the crew are non-male (female or non-binary) because after ten years hibernation, they will be awoken en route and artificially inseminated so that there are children when they arrive at Planet X. Finally, all of them have an implanted VR device that causes each of them to see and live in a different world (forest, ocean, city, ...) overlaid on the cramped and undecorated star ship. I didn't believe a single one of these. I remember no attempt to make any of these ideas plausible or even internally motivated. The second negative was the primary character: she falls in the category of "hero who is really competent but thinks they are not." This can be entertaining when Bujold does it with Miles Vorkosigan, or really annoying when Applegate did it in the Endling series. Here it's annoying. The third and final negative for me was that a lot of the character motivation was high school level drama with friendships and who likes who now. It would have been overdone for a young adult novel, which this is not.

That said, I'm glad I stayed with the book. Eventually the positive elements came together. One of the positive elements is the mystery aspect. Early on it becomes clear someone is sabotaging the mission. For at least 2/3 of the book, this mystery was very underdeveloped and I feared it would lead nowhere. When it finally came front and center, I've read and watched enough mysteries to have a pretty good idea who the culprit was, but this aspect was fine, with suitable red herrings. Another positive element is having all the characters be women or non-binary. While implausibly engineered, it made for a different reading experience. The tension between Japanese and American culture that that drives the main character was well-done, based on the author's own background. It would have been nice to see similar tensions in other characters given some space A third positive element was the environment of the ship. A drawing is provided at the start and like a floorplan of a house in a murder mystery, it's valuable for understanding events. The physics of the ship gets a bit loosey-goosey near the end but is fine for fictional purposes.

Recommended for SF fans, with the warning that it's very much a stew of too many ingredients.

I picked up this book because it was on Charlie Jane Anders's list of best science fiction / fantasy books of 2023. And wow, I'm glad I did! I loved everything about this book: the protagonist's unique position in her world, the gender dynamics of who gets to be on the mission, the fact that there are actually multiple trans characters, the slow reveal of exactly what Asuka left behind on Earth, the intense friendships between the characters, the interaction with real-world political tensions, the supporting cast who all have very distinct personalities, and the way DAR is used to tell us more about characters and how they see the world. There's some messed up stuff baked into the space trip they're on -- and the characters actually engage with how messed up it is! If you have any opinions about generation ships or "humanity's last hope" spaceship plots, you should read this book. ( )

Despite being told these are highly competent people, the crew never feels like a crew trained to work together. They neglect their duties. They let personal animosities not only interfere, but drive them. To do anything at scale, you need a competent team, not just a set of competent individuals. The book seems to miss that.

To be fair, the entire sabotage plot wouldn't work like it does if this was a competent team. It'd be a very different book.

All that aside, at about halfway through the plot became less navel-gazy and I was finally able to suspend disbelief well enough to read through to the end. When something is actually happening, such as Asuka finally doing some investigation or the saboteur stepping up attacks some of the flaws can be ignored. ( )

3.5 stars. Pretty decent for a debut. ( )