I have to admit I requested this book on a bit of a whim (I read Martin MacInnes’ In Ascension earlier this year, so was primed for some more space-set sci-fi), but I was completely blindsided by how much I enjoyed it. The blurb doesn’t give much away beyond the central premise - an intergenerational deep-space voyage to a promised new home - and I was expecting the journey itself to take centre stage. Instead the focus rests much more on the ups and downs of the society aboard the ship, who consider themselves the last vestiges of humanity, and for me it proved to be an unexpectedly profound and absorbing read.

The structure of the novel initially threw me slightly, comprised of non-chronological segments set during different eras in Shipworld’s multi-century history, by turns beset by uncertainty and buoyed by hope. However, I quickly started looking forward to each shift in perspective and voice: the author has a knack for vivid characterisation, and it was a pleasure to encounter pivotal figures and their legacies as they re-emerged in past and present. Various (often radically nonconformist) members of the Oort family frequently take centre stage and offer a thread to follow through the narrative, which is also anchored by impressively detailed and imaginative worldbuilding. Though some elements did feel like a bit of a reach for me, on the whole I was fascinated by Shipworld from the start and loved discovering more about it each time I turned the page.

The themes and questions of Here and Beyond have never been more timely than at our present moment, and I hope this novel finds as broad an audience as possible outside of a science-fiction readership. Curious and compassionate, playful and perceptive, it’s not only a gripping story but also a fascinating reflection on what it means to be human, how we forge our pasts and our futures, and what we carry with us, even when we’d rather leave it behind.

A solid 3-star-read.
The writing is minimalistic and fits the bill.
The concept of a spaceship with selected successors of humanity spanning across generations is cool and explores multitudes of human life in a short space.
Had this been more detailed and longer, had the concept been fully explored, I would have rated this higher.

This was a really interesting premise, however a lot of the book felt like an info dump. The first few chapters were full of so much information that I had to reread them a few times to fully process everything. I also wasn’t the biggest fan of the narration style and the slow plot. A real mixed bag for me.

I love the concept and themes in this novel but the pacing and writing style didn’t quite hit the spot.

What worked for me:
🚀 I loved the whole premise: following a generation ship from leaving Earth to arriving on its new planet told through interwoven generational narratives
🚀 The climate breakdown and capitalist hellscape observations of Earthworld in Jan’s section felt timely and eerily predictive
🚀 Everything about the robotic birds
🚀 Commentary around different ailments and struggles that each generation experienced; the subtle nod to history repeating itself
🚀 Poignancy of some of the story sections exposing the journal authors as unreliable narrators
🚀 The cover is beautiful

What I wasn’t so keen on was largely the writing:
☄️ In part one, we’re following two people in the close third person, but then we get random spurts of omniscient. The random omniscient appears throughout the book to confusing effect.
☄️ For this reader, the pacing was off. Sometimes, I could only manage a few pages due to the meandering, repetitive, and overwritten prose; other times, I was reading rapidly without noticing the page numbers at all! I found the journal entry chapters tedious and slow. While the story chapters were better, there was sometimes a noticeable amount of extraneous detail and pontifications that didn’t seem to add anything to the story.
☄️ The showing and telling swung heavily toward telling which might have exacerbated the previous point. I would have liked to see more distinct characterization across characters; sometimes it felt like characters were simply a vessel for clunky info-dumping through a stream of consciousness style.
☄️ I found the ending underwhelming and flat. I had a lot of unanswered questions and felt the book just stopped rather than had an intentional ending.

This had all of the ingredients of a five-star read but the recipe didn't realize the full potential for me. 3.5 rounded up for the story itself.

I was privileged to have my request to review this accepted by Bloomsbury Publishing through NetGalley.

I was really looking forward to reading this book, it sounded like the sort of book I would enjoy. However, I am afraid that I didn't enjoy it. I found it to be too rambling and I wasn't a fan of the writing, I am sorry to be so blunt, but it really wasn't for me.