Faith's Updates

"Chaotic, hard to follow, super interesting.
This is my first book by this author, and it was his last. I’m not sure if I’ll read more of his work, but I’d at least be interested.
This book, however, was quite a bit of work and less of a reading pleasure. In terms of content, it’s a blast. It really tickled various parts of my brain. It’s full of interesting cultural references to ancient Earth, but the current population of the generation ship has evolved so far away from Earth that everything takes on a completely different context.
At the same time, the cultural, linguistic, and hierarchical development on this ship is a uniquely fascinating phenomenon.
Well, I’m really glad I made it through without completely losing my mind. It’s beautifully written, but the narrative jumps around—sometimes switching between countless narrative perspectives page after page. The sheer number of characters telling the story here is overwhelming. On top of that, I’m really bad with names—not just in books, but in real life, too. And here, every character not only has names that are complicated—at least for me—but also multiple names, nicknames, and sometimes just job titles. It was downright mean to me. Pretty early on in the book, I decided to ignore all the names and not try to constantly remember who was who; instead, I focused solely on the plot. That worked, but I had so many question marks swirling around in my head the whole time.
Well, in the end, almost everyone dies anyway...

The Planners had thought of everything. They had even written a constitution for the Whale, devised by the best social technicians Earth had to offer, laying out the duties and authorities for every rank and rating aboard. They had accounted for every contingency, for every small thing, but they had forgotten one rather large thing.
Those aboard would be human beings. 😳

Astrogation reported that something called BK Ceti, an F0 variable star three-hundred-and-thirty lights distant, appeared to have shifted by a nanometer on the skymap. Oh, be still, my heart! 🤭

We think there must be a cleansing when the old is swept away, but is it not more horrifying to think that matters after the Mutiny will proceed pretty much as before? They will wear different costumes and bear different titles, but, otherwise they will be the ‘same old, same old.’ 🥺"