Dust

It was quite enjoyable, good to pass a quiet day.

I liked this book for the incredible descriptions of the world, which is a huge generational star ship but which the human characters experience more as a real, planetary-type place. There are rivers and caves and mountains and trees and most of the time the characters seem to live a medieval existence. But it soon becomes obvious that they also know they are on a ship traveling through space,...more

I liked this book for the incredible descriptions of the world, which is a huge generational star ship but which the human characters experience more as a real, planetary-type place. There are rivers and caves and mountains and trees and most of the time the characters seem to live a medieval existence. But it soon becomes obvious that they also know they are on a ship traveling through space, although they are strangely uninterested in figuring out where they are, or how the ship works, or where they are going. The beings with all the answers are artificial intelligences, broken and scattered after a catastrophic failure of the ship's sytems that is left mostly unexplained. I enjoyed the way the author didn't spend a lot of time explaining exactly what had happened to bring the ship and the humans to the brink of disaster. Instead, the author shows parts of the whole, using beautiful descriptions and great imagination, and the reader gradually pieces together what is really going on. Our scifi book club gave the book mixed reviews but we definitely found a lot to discuss. I listened to this as an audio book read by Alma Cuervo and she did an excellent job.   hide

june 08why do I keep trying to read sf? why do I read science fiction?