This is one of the most absorbing books I have ever read. I can't put my finger on exactly why, but I feel like I've been travelling with the crew. Finishing the novel, I feel exhausted, cold and drained, with a strange sense of hopefulness. And yes, this is all good. I read to be transported places, to feel unusual emotions, to experience other lives and people, and Temi Oh really delivers.

While the ending wasn't really to my tastes, it fit well and to be honest, the book isn't about the ending, it's about getting there. This is a book of journeys, the journey to get onto the crew, the epic travelling through the solar system and the personal and emotional journeys of the characters. I'm glad I got to walk beside them.

I liked this a lot.
Oh imagines that Britain has somehow (!) got a viable space programme, and before the London Olympics in 2012 is able to send a manned crew to colonise a new planet, Terra Two. Key to the plan, which involves a journey of over twenty years, is a teenage crew who will still be young enough to be leaders when they arrive. The book combines Harry Potter-esque boarding school rivalries with sci-fi tropes around the possibilties of Utopian society, as well as moments that appear to be veering into Alien territory. Sometimes I got lost amongst the teenage characters (the proof copy didn't help this on my kindle) and I wasn't sure at points if this was supposed to be YA. It's been compared to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, but I'm not sure (for me) if this has the same emotional resonance as that series. As the blurber has written 'something always goes wrong': part of the tension here is trying to work out just what.
Fancy promo video here: https://youtu.be/Xuu7IfVwzHw

A debut that, despite its flaws, delivers highly accomplished psychological drama on a teen-led mission to a second Earth.

It's the UK, 2012. Summer is coming, the Olympic spirit is setting in, and in London, six teenagers are about to join a 10-person mission to a planet in a nearby system, which humans have discovered is almost a mirror of our own world. The UK Space Agency, which has held its own against the cold war superpowers even as the USA makes it to the moon and the Russians are the first to land on Mars, is eager to be the first onto the planet. The six crew members chosen to start colonising Terra-Two have been training at an intensive space academy for years, and are finally ready to take their place on this twenty-three year mission into the unknown. That is, until things start to unravel on their very last day on earth, throwing the entire mission and the capacity of the crew to undertake it into doubt.

So opens debut YA science fiction novel from Temi Oh, a claustrophobic not-quite-generation-ship story which quickly turns into a psychological meditation on its small cast of characters. The narrative is told from the perspective of each of the kids of the "Beta" crew, including Jesse Solloway, a last-minute replacement selected from their backup team, whose sudden inclusion in the final lineup won't be a surprise to readers given that his point of view is literally in the first section (though I'll leave the exact circumstances of his promotion a mystery). Aside from Jesse, there's also golden-boy alpha male Harry; artistic, passionate Ara; awkward mechanics expert Eliot; underprivileged hyperpolyglot Poppy; and Astrid and Juno, twins with very different outlooks on the mission and their places within it. There's a complement of adults too, who mostly fall along a spectrum of being kind but curmugeonly, but the focus is very much on the youth contingent of the mission and the kids' specific problems - there's definitely a sense that these are young people who haven't quite internalised the fact that the "teachers" have their own lives and struggles, even if they intellectually know about the challenges their seniors must face.

By opening the action around the Terra-two mission, and the tiny complement of students who get onto it from the academic pressure cooker of Dalton academy, Oh sets up an interesting moment to start the story. By this point, all of the characters have spent years in each others' company to some extent, and while some clearly know each other better than others - there's a notable divide between Jesse and the crew who were originally selected - we are still reading about relationships that have a great deal of baggage behind them, and the whole that's handled quite well. At the same time, setting the action at the start of the crew's 23-year journey makes the distance to the planet insurmountable. I suspect it's no accident that the title frames Terra-two as a "dream": a planet that will somehow provide all the answers to an overcrowded, dying earth, packed with natural beauty and already habitable for humans, somehow becoming more and more unreal with every detail we learn that conforms to the way things are on Earth. The fact that this mission seems so dreamlike, and the protagonists feel so underequipped, may be frustrating for readers seeking a more Seveneves-esque tale of human ingenuity in the face of interstellar adversity, but that's sort of the point: there's a subtle but increasingly clear message that we are supposed to question the design and realism of this mission, even while the teenagers themselves are fixated on their own destinies and, more practically, surviving long enough to arrive with them.

At the heart of Do You Dream of Terra Two is an interrogation of a point I rarely see made so well: what makes someone gifted, or a leader? All of the teenagers selected for the mission are indisputably talented and driven, and have been placed in a school environment which is clearly intended as its own test of their commitment and capabilities, with very little introspection offered or encouraged about what this pressure actually qualifies them to do. The selection of Harry, the ship's most privileged white male, as not only the pilot-in-training but also future commander (jobs which it is assumed are automatically linked) is the most overt result of that system, but the attempts by Juno, Astrid and even Jesse to articulate their own aspirations for the future, and test the assumption that they are best placed to lead others into it, are equally interesting. At no point does Oh allow us to forget we are watching barely-adults figure themselves out, and much of the tension comes from watching them do so on a spaceship where there is literally no escape from each other or their precarious situation. That it does so - and lets its characters make horrible choices and unforgivable mistakes without ever crossing the line into being unlikeable characters (with one possible exception) - is a testament to how well crafted the psychosocial elements of this text are. 

Although I found much of Do You Dream of Terra Two successful, there were still elements that didn't work. Although this isn't a short book, the inclusion of so many point of view characters, all with multiple problems and plot strands, means that some things fall by the wayside. This might also be intentional: for example, one character has an eating disorder that is, in hindsight, pretty well signposted but never "developed", and the fact that readers are likely to forget about it in between "wait, that doesn't sound healthy" cues reflects, in my experience, how easy it can be to fail to recognise individuals with eating disorders in one's extended social circle. If that is what's going on, though, it's subtle to the point of being quite frustrating from a plot perspective. The more overt mystical elements in the text - like Astrid's prophetic dreams, or the visions Eliot has of a former classmate - also struggle to find purchase in amongst everything else that's going on. 

More disappointingly, the mystic lens given to Terra Two also seems to prevent any discussion of the planet, or of the journey the crew are undertaking, from a colonial perspective. All of the Beta crew - who are equally split between white and PoC (Black and biracial) members (for the record, they all present as cis, heterosexual and no disabilities beyond mental health issues are raised... sigh) - project blank canvas visions onto Terra Two, but at no point is the UKSA's "Off-World Colonisation" project linked to the country's colonial past and its legacy. In particular, neither Astrid and Juno, who are Black Kenyan, make the link between their roles on a prestigious British mission and the historical factors that led to them and their families making the leap (it turns out, late in the book, that their father is a missionary, which is a whole other situation in itself), and the assumptions they are now making about taking "ownership" of Terra-two when they arrive. Instead, when the planet's future isn't being seen through the lens of selfish teenage aspirations, it's treated as a new "Scramble for Africa" situation, in which the UK needs to turn up and plant its flag first before all the other countries arrive and claim their own territory on the planet. I accept that not all books can be all things but in a book that is so open in other ways about drawing on contemporary British identity and all its contradictions, the lack of any interrogation on this point is jarring.

Despite its problems, Do You Dream of Terra Two is a book with plenty to recommend it to the right audience - though its preoccupation is far more on the thoughts and development of its young protagonists than the end goal of the trip they are on, that psychological element is handled with immense skill, and for a debut author this definitely sets Temi Oh up as someone to watch. There may not be any more story to tell when it comes to the journey of the Damocles, but I'm definitely interested in more smart, relateable and subtle fiction in whatever future worlds - tangible or otherwise - the author chooses to visit in future.

Content warning: Suicide

This book is being marketed as being some combination of A Long Way to A Small Angry Planet and The 100 and in a way, I can see that. It is certainly the character-driven science fiction of Becky Chambers and there are the character tensions of The 100 but this book has a lot of things those books don't and likewise is missing some of the things those books do have. I pretty much always find that any book sold on a comparison will fall short of those lofty expectations, but in this case, I think it's more that this book is different.

Is there a name for the sub-genre of science fiction that focusses on the 'something has gone wrong and now they must solve the problem or die in the depths of space'? There must be because that is far too long. That's almost the category in which I would put this book because certainly, a good deal of the tension in this story comes from the problems of being stuck on a spacecraft where things go wrong. 

But what this book does on top of that is throw in some very human aspects to the story. As the content warning suggests, this book contains some very difficult human themes including suicide. It makes this a very harrowing story at times, these characters have more to go through than just dealing with space problems, but it also makes you as a reader have an even deeper connection with them. This book doesn't shy away from the fact that, to be astronauts, you kind of have to also be geniuses. It would be easy, therefore, to either create dumbed-down astronauts or unrelatable geniuses. Temi Oh manages to create these very intelligent but also very human characters by showing how they react to situations that aren't just space-related. 

I'm finding it quite difficult to write this review, even though I did finish the book more recently than some other reviews I've written in the past. This is just a hard book to wrap your head around - and I mean that in a good way. It's so much more than just a space survival book, it's more than just characters cracking under the pressure, there's something more hopeful behind it all, something hugely philosophical underpinning everything. It's a book that requires a bit of processing - but never in a pretentious way. 

If you enjoy science fiction I think you will like this, I'm still finding my feet in the genre so I can't say for certain but I thought it was wonderful. But equally, if you're as new to the genre as I am, but you know that you like these strange thought-provoking stories, then I think you'll enjoy it as much as I did. 

I don't want to say too much more, this is a book to discover for yourself, but I hope you will read it and enjoy it. 

My rating: 4/5 stars

I received a free digital advanced review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I'm struggling a little bit to know how to rate this book, part of me loved it and while I didn't 'dream of Terra-Two' I certainly couldn't wait to pick it up and carry on reading. I loved the characters, the journey thet had both literally and figuratively. The space travel was interesting and watching they crew cope (or not) in their various ways was well written.

Then I realised I was over 80% of the way through the book and it felt like there should be loads left to come, no problem I hadn't realised it was the start of a series and I'd just have to look forward to the next one. The all of a sudden the author wrapped up the story I a few pages and it ended! No warning, no real resolution to a lot of things. I left me feeling a bit cast adrift, cheated out of a good story.

There was so much more the author could have explored, made it into a series or a longer book, I wanted to learn more about the Chinese generation ship also on the way to Terra-Two. I wanted to watch the Beta grow older, wanted to see more of the earth they had left behind, wanted to see them adjust to life on Terra-Two if they could. Instead I got a dream sequence that barely lasted two pages. It was like your favourite TV show being cancelled mid season and the writers choosing go quickly wrap it up. I'm not sure why the author made that choice but it was an odd one.

I loved 90% of this book, but the end let it down.

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? is an alternate history where a planet with life-sustaining capabilities has been discovered and, in 2012, the first expedition is sent out to try and colonise it. It's the story of the six young astronauts who go on that 23-year-long mission, and their journey into space.

This isn't an action-packed book, far from it. It's a character-driven novel, where you might start out thinking you don't really like all of the characters, but most of them grow on you slowly and sneakily. It's a long book (over 500 pages), and you get POVs from every character (though some more than others), so you really get to understand each of them, their worries and their motivations. Which is good, don't get me wrong. I did like that aspect of it. However, for three quarters of the book, there was hardly any conflict (or, what conflict there was happened quickly and ended quickly too) or action. And I was mostly fine with that (for once. You know me and action), but around two thirds through I did start getting a little bored. The last quarter of the book was amazing, because things were happening, but between two thirds through and three quarters, I felt like it drifted a little.

Linked to that, the number of POVs was a little overwhelming at times. On the one hand, it was good to see all the characters, but on the other, I wasn't all that interested in one or two of them, so I kind of skimmed their parts. The switches between the POVs sometimes felt really abrupt, almost as if there should have been more to come, which got cut out. That also contributed to the plot occasionally feeling kind of bitty, like getting snapshots of their life instead of a continuous arc. (Which, I get because it covers a whole year in a 23-year mission, but I did feel like maybe it could have been woven together a bit more seamlessly at points.)

Because it was so bitty, the conflict that did happen before 75% felt almost like neither it nor the aftermath of it were given time to develop. For the buildup that was less of a problem, because there was always some undercurrent of it running through previous parts, but I definitely thought sometimes the aftermath could have done with being dwelt on a bit longer (or even the conflict itself at points). I had a similar issue with the declaration of love, because that distinctly felt like it came out of nowhere. Although it wasn't underdeveloped, it could have done with even more development.

This may all sound somewhat negative, but I did enjoy this book, for sure. Like I said, for most of it I didn't mind the character-driven aspect, and I really loved the last quarter. And the kind of forced found family trope was done pretty well too (so much that I was really sad about the ending). It's just that one twelfth of the story where it started to drag and I got bored that's made me rate this 3.5 stars instead of 4.

Do you Dream of Terra-Two? gets off to a slow start taking it's time to introduce all the different characters and the relationships between them. It sounds like a bad thing but it's really not because it's so well done. There is a large cast but they're not hard to follow and all of them have something to like about them.

I was hooked right from the start when these young wannabe astronauts have to deal with the suicide of one of their number. One minute they are bright young things featuring on the front of magazines and being envied by most of the teenagers in Britain; the next they are having to deal with grief and loss whilst leaving behind their homes (and the plant!) to spend 25 years in close confinement with only about 10 other people. They don't know what they will find when they get to Terra-Two or even if the planet is habitable and they all deal with the stress in different ways.
The language is beautiful - read slowly for full enjoyment - and I loved all the science in it. The balance between science and human emotions is perfectly right, a note that is often hard to hit in a sci-fi novel.

I got used to it being about people and the way they might deal with leaving their homes and families and everything they know behind. So the turn of events near the end surprised me.

I thought it was just going to be a character drama - and there's nothing wrong with that, only the blurb made me expect an action-adventure - and the author lands a hit from out of nowhere with a drama filled ending. It shakes things up just when the story felt a bit like it was treading and retreading the same ground. It gets a little bit predictable but it also makes the story a lot more exciting.

I was debating between rating this 4 or 5 stars - the events at the end are a bit too convenient but you know what? I really loved it and that tips it over into 5 stars for me even if it's not completely perfect.

Do you Dream of Terra-Two? is beautifully written and a perfect blend of sci-fi and humanness. I highly recommend adding this to your to-read list.

I really enjoyed this, it was darker than I expected but I liked the gritty realism, I feel like it was a good representation of what would happen in that situation. I felt like the division of chapters between the characters was a bit off, it skewed heavily towards certain characters and especially at the end seemed to only show 2 viewpoints which I thought was a shame. I'm not sure if it will be going in the box but I will definitely feature it in the monthly newsletter if it doesn't

I loved the premise for this novel and was expecting an intense voyage into space with fascinating characters. I was also under the impression that it would be literary fiction for adults. Instead I soon realised it was YA fiction with clunky dialogue and an over enthusiastic use of adjectives. This overlong novel feels like an early draft that would benefit from judicial and strenuous editing. I could not read beyond the first few chapters..

Imagining alternative worlds, thinking about and interrogating the political and ethical components of decision-making is a political act. And it is always exciting to discover young women writers that visualise new worlds and possibilities, and write thoughtfully about the political and moral considerations of space colonisation.

Temi Oh’s debut sci-fi novel Do You Dream of Terra-Two? is a story that explores all the above issues. The Earth is dying. Humans have triggered the sixth great period of species extinction in Earth’s history. Overpopulation, climate change and the alarming depletion of Earth’s resources,is putting the continuity of humanity at risk. To address the problem, the world’s nations’ are in a new space-race to colonise Terra-Two, an earth-like planet, which it takes 23 years to travel to. Britain is the first country that prepares and sends a group of four experienced astronauts (Alphas) and six carefully selected, for their intelligence, abilities and psychological stability, teenagers,between 18 and 20 years old (Betas), to prepare Terra-two for colonization. One morning, in the summer of 2012, the team is being boarding to Damocles, the small spaceship that will carry them to Terra-two. For the next 23 years, Damocles, a name that represents the idea that those in power always labour under the spectre of anxiety and death, will be their home.

The book focuses on the team of the teenager astronauts and centres in their last day on Earth and their first year in space. Do You Dream of Terra-Two? is an unexpected and ambitious book. It is a study of how it is to live in isolation, either socially or emotionally, a sense that may lead a person to feel anxious, lonely or depressed. It’s a characters’ story that, although I didn’t really connect with any of them, they grabbed my attention, and I found myself immersed to their conflicts and emotions, their actions and reactions.

Temi Oh is looking into the emotional aspect of being an astronaut,the fact that you are completely alone most of the time, separating from almost everyone you know. In the case of the characters in the novel it feels like a kind of death, because they are basically separating from their families and friends forever, especially for the youngest crew there are things that they would never experience, feelings that they would never feel, and places that they would never go. After a few months on board there is that feeling that they are suffering from guilt and confusion over a loss, a prolonged and complicated grief that dominates the relationship between them. But there is also hope. They are going to found another planet,and although they all have different ideas of how they are going to do it, they have this adolescent optimism that encourage their dreams because they know they can come true.

The story takes an unexpected, and welcome, turn in the second half of the novel, when disaster forces the characters to action. It’s interesting to follow their emotional development, their determination, and how they are coming together to overcome their weakness.

I suppose one of the weakness of the novel is that the characters are not very well defined and, almost until the end of the story, I was quite unsure who the protagonists are. Also, the ending left me a bit unsatisfied; I just needed more of that intensity and action found in the climax of the story, I think.

I’ve got an early version of the novel from Net galley, and there were some formatting issues, such as certain names or places were not capitalised. Not important but it was a bit annoying for such a lengthy book.

Overall, I liked the plot, and Temi Oh’s writing is insightful and thoughtful. Do You Dream of Terra-Two? is a journey of imagination from where when we return we are better able to interpret our own place in the world. I would love to read more work of this promising author.

I was so keen to read this book I bumped it up to the top of my reading list, and I was not sorry I did.I love rip roaring space adventures and this fell into that category.I thought it was a cracking idea to select a bunch of gifted ,talented youngsters and train them to go into space, makes perfect sense when you consider how long the journey will take.Of course things don't always go according to plan, or it would be predictable, and this book was definitely not predictable.I liked most of the main characters, and the twists and surprises that were thrown in made for a great read.My only very slight criticism was that I felt the end was a little drawn out ,but that could have just been me being very keen to find out what was going to happen.Overall I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, and will look out for more by this author .Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.

The problem with an elevator pitch is that you don't always feel like you got off at the right floor. Those hoping for a Wayfarer vibe in this character-driven space drama are likely to be disappointed, but it is a solid debut from a gifted author. I loved Temi Oh's prose and was intrigued by the relationships between her flawed, difficult crew of teenagers, although I found myself lukewarm about the convenient left turns they made in the final act. Still, there’s plenty to enjoy along the way, and I’ll keep an eye open for more books by Temi Oh in future.

An interesting debut novel from a young author.
Six very young people, trained for a life-long mission. A couple of older astronauts. Will they make it to that mysterious planet Terra-Two? The author gives us a story that seems to be written to have a movie (or a mini series) made out of it. There is not so much of the technical details - hardly any - but lots and lots more about the way the human mind works and what happens when you put a couple of people in a space ship, that will hopefully reach its destination within a generation?
It is a nice read with here and there a surprise, but on the other hand you somehow never get to know all characters as good as you would want. And somehow I think the author could have found a solution for the biggest problem the astronauts face later in the book. But hey, I'm no space technician...
I would love to read more of this author to see how she develops.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster.

Ten astronauts, most still teenagers, leave a dying Earth to find Terra-Two; they are the vanguard of humanity's last-gasp attempt at survival. They face a journey of 23 years in close quarters, with no one to rely on but each other when things go wrong. And, as the blurb points out, something always goes wrong.

Do You Dream of Terra-Two is instantly engaging, partly because the stakes are so high, and partly because the narrative shifts between the heads of each of the main characters, starting with my favourite, Jesse. An outsider, "the quirky one" who stands in contrast to the effortless privilege exuded by a couple of the other characters, he sees Terra-Two as his chance to escape a death sentence - so it's a shame that, as the book begins, he hasn't made the final cut. Next up is Poppy, brought up on a northern English council estate by a single mum - yet because of her looks and the colour of her skin, she's apparently the audience favourite and thus the clear choice for communications officer (an important role in these social media-friendly days). Always desperate to escape her origins, she is the one who has the hardest job adjusting to life aboard ship.

The other main characters are similarly interesting, and my favourite thing about this book is that, with one exception, they're all basically nice. They all believe in their quest and want the best for the human race. The tension arises in the gaps between their understanding of what "the best" is.

If I have a criticism, it's that not a huge amount happens despite the sky-high (pun not entirely intended) tension. The characters bounce off each other, they work through their various dilemmas and conflicts, and it's all intensely readable. But it's hard to escape the sensation of being trapped on a ship with these people, watching the tension build and waiting for it to burst.

That said, I loved being with the characters so much that I didn't mind the lack of action. When it does come, it's always unpredictable and the outcomes are unexpected in various ways. There are gaps left open for a sequel, one I'd very much like to see!

I'll definitely be watching to see what Temi Oh writes next, and I would love it to be a sequel to this book.

I was kindly provided with a review copy of this by the publisher via NetGalley for reviewing purposes.

Loved this book. Intriguing premise with several twists. Echoes of The Martian and Wool in that once you're locked down, there's no escape. Or is there?

I chose this as my 100th book read this year and I'm so pleased I did! I'm a big sci-fi fan, and have always been particularly fond of the 'new colonists' type of books, whether it be on a new planet, up in space on their way, or even preparing to leave earth and head off into the unknown. This was a fantastic one, and I really enjoyed it!
With the background of being the first team of people to head off and start a new colony, the book is mostly about people, and specifically the teenagers that make up the 'Beta' - Astrid, Juno, Eliot, Ara, Harry, Jesse, and Poppy. I found them really interesting and enjoyed their different viewpoints on life, each other, and musings on leaving behind everything they've ever known. The second half of the book (after leaving) became very exciting and action packed, and I could visualise the goings on, vaguely reminded me of a few sci-fi films but was different enough to not be something I've seen/read before. I loved that overall it was less about the struggle of the hard work they were doing, and more about the struggle of how they thought and felt about what they were doing. By the end I liked every character (let's just say that some of them did some growing up through the course of the book!) And if there's ever a sequel, I'd love to read it. (It doesn't need one, feels perfectly finished, but equally I could see that we might be able to visit these characters again further down the line). I would recommend this to friends and family, and I'm very glad for the chance to read it for review via Netgalley. I plan to read more by this author.

I was looking forward to reading this one so I was delighted to be approved. Do You Dream of Terra-Two? was a really character-driven book, with more focus on the effects of a mission to a new planet on those that were undertaking it than anything else. I was interested to see what would happen, but I found my interest was waning the further in I got. It’s quite a long book, and while some things happen that accelerate the tension, I just found it a bit hard going at times, that being said, it’s well written and it was an interesting concept. I enjoyed it!

There was a lot to like about this novel: interesting characters and a fresh take on the generation ship story. However, I felt that the story did slow considerably after the first 100 pages, and given the number of POVs you never got as much time with the really interesting characters, Juno, Polly and Eliot, as I wanted. I also felt that the characters arc’s were largely internal, so some of their decisions felt under explained.

If you enjoyed this you’d probably also like Noumenon by Marina Lostetter, The Loneliness of Distant Beings by Kate Ling, Journey into Space by Toby Litt and The Wanderers by Meg Howrey.

I loved this book. I enjoyed the concept and I would have loved to have been chosen to venture into the stars to another planet. I enjoyed reading about the characters, Although it did ramble on a bit and feel it could have been edited further. Having said that, the story will stay with me for a long time into the future. Great.

Do You Dream of Terra-two succeeds both as a great sci-fi story and a brilliant drama. The novel is told from the perspectives of all of the young characters as they develop and mature on their adventure. The young people are the Beta, part of a manned mission to colonize an earth-like planet. The trip will take 23 years and they will take over from the older Alpha crew to establish the settlement on Terra-two. Each one has been picked after a rigorous selection process that has pitted them against each other. Within the Beta, there are Alphas.
The journey is possible through new technology that allows the ship to travel at high speeds. The 23 year long voyage , however, has a magical dreamlike quality. The planet was discovered by a mysterious eccentric who had weirdly accurate dreams about it. The sci-fi takes a back seat to the relationships between the protagonists, allowing the reader to experience the weirdness and claustrophobia of the trip. Even though you expect things to go wrong in this story, they still wrong foot you when they do, and take the story in new and exciting directions.
I highly recommend this book, and look forward to the inevitable movie.