A somewhat moralistic tale of the earth’s population exiled to vast space arks (one thousand of them) in order to teach humanity the folly of destroying its environment and the evils of capitalism.
All is well until we encounter what Iain M. Banks would call a “smartmatter” outbreak.
There’s quite a bit of horror (which Squeamish me didn’t really like) and Gareth is not afraid to kill off fairly major characters and millions of innocent bystanders.
The origin of the “smart matter” is quite a clever plot twist but some elements seem a little simplistic, almost puerile at times, so it’s a curious mix. I did however like it enough to order the second volume.
I listened to this as an audio book, which was fairly well done except for some odd pronunciations which took me out of the story for a while — does anyone actually proof-listen to these things?
Ships have a “bow”, not a “boe”, “Hearth” does not rhyme with “Earth” and “Megacity” is not pronounced as if it is “sagacity”. At least there was nothing as egregious as “primmer” from the Diamond Age narrator.
It’s a good but not great adventure story that probably did not need quite so much explicit horror (or maybe I just need to toughen up)!