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moonknitter's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Death and Toxic relationship
mercerhanau's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
It’s fun to read sections of an ethnography about humans by a Harmagian. Interesting to see a human culture described by an outsider and compared to squishy, slug-like aliens with different rituals and cultural norms around birth and death.
Real-world themes the book touches on: (hidden for some minor spoiler details)
* Collective trauma, mass death (at the very beginning of the book)
* How we handle the dead, relationship to resources in a closed system (whether planetary or in a spaceship), human composting.
* Communal living
* Sex work (pro! As an important, legitimate, unstigmatized profession with regulations and safety measures for all involved)
* Ethical non-monogamy (mentioned more briefly than previous books)
* Challenges of solo parenting with a partner who travels frequently
* Children and toddlers using technology like video games (“sims”)
* Shared labor: everyone healthy and over 14 years old in the fleet takes turns working on sanitation so it isn’t out of sight or out of mind. Nothing is left to “lesser people.” Other roles are more specialized, but this shared responsibility both breaks up undesirable tasks and keeps people humbly in touch with the resource recycling.
* Professions and compensation: Labor isn’t compensated, nor do some professions receive more resources than others. All basic needs are met: food, water, housing, oxygen, etc. It’s rare for adults not to work, but it’s scorned. The question “what do you do?” asks what a person does for the community, for “us”. People thank each other for what they provide: artists for murals, farmers for food, doctors for medical attention, etc.
* Personal property: Property is communal until it enters a family home. Then stealing would be illegal, but people don’t need to steal anyway since their basic needs are met. (Cf. better social support reduces crime, rather than more criminalization and policing)
* Economics with multiple currencies: trade worked fine until outside currency and goods entered the equation. (Cf. Cuba, from my understanding?)
* Caring for aging parents. Some of this book’s topics remind me of A Prayer for the Crown-Shy: body mods, medical intervention for failing body parts, community care, alternative economic systems without strict currency
* Pros and cons of this lifestyle, especially for raising kids. Parents struggling to explain traumatic subject matter to their children, but also nice examples of parents being supportive and good listeners regarding their kids’ fears (and possible PTSD)
* Critiques of the inefficiency of bureaucracy meant to ensure fairness. People breaking protocol to claim more resources for themselves.
* Stages of fetal development between different species: a Harmagian reflects on how she doesn’t remember her life as a polyp, so it wasn’t really “her”. The transition between being a polyp and one’s baby self is seen as a death in her culture. Perhaps commentary on pro-life arguments of “life begins at conception”? She’s also bringing it up in the context of grieving for children and human parents holding their children close when they hear of a young person’s death. She has a different, more distant relationship to her own offspring.
* Politicization of the death of a newcomer. Who to blame, who to grieve, what this means for immigration acceptance vs. restriction, outsiders using limited resources, how to prevent future tragedies, etc.
* What kinds of jobs can (and will) be replaced by artificial intelligence
* A Harmagian’s brief reflections on her species’s “superiority” by means of conquest. Regret, reparations, sharing of technology and partnership with those they once harmed. What makes a species “worthy” of membership in the Galactic Commons?
* Archives and museums: what’s the point of keeping old things around rather than repairing/recycling them? Are people studying them and learning useful things? The homesteaders’ archives keep digital records and no physical objects, since space and resources are limited.
Moderate: Death, Xenophobia, and Grief
Minor: Drug use, Vomit, Medical content, Alcohol, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic
broken_biscuits's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
Moderate: Death and Murder
laurel616's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
This book is exactly what I would think of when I think of character study books. There was also good atmospheric descriptions that kept me entertained. However, I was hoping that the character viewpoints we read would interact more with each other in the end.
We also got a bit in the prologue about this terrible event that happened in the past, but then we really minimally returned to that event, and really only saw the effects of that event on one character and her family. I feel that could have been expanded on greatly, how a trauma like that could effect everything.
Moderate: Death and Xenophobia
literarylily's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Moderate: Death
emilyvelle's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
Minor: Death
dreamersmind's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
Things I liked in this book:
1. Getting to see more world building and getting to understand fleet society
2. Each character brought interesting parts to the story to allow the reader to get a fuller picture of the fleet.
Things I didn’t like in this book:
1. There were a lot of characters to keep track of and it took a while to get my bearings and stop confusing characters with each other.
2. The first half of the book was extremely slow paced.
“Our species doesn’t operate by reality. It operates by stories. Cities are a story. Money is a story. Space was a story, once. A king tells us a story about who we are and why were great, and that story is enough to make us go kill people who tell a different story or maybe the people kill the King, because they don’t like his story, and have begun to tell themselves a different one. When our planet started dying our species was so caught up in stories. We had thousands of stories about ourselves —that’s still true, don’t forget that for a minute— but not enough of us were looking at the reality of things. Once reality caught up with us and we started changing her stories to acknowledge it, It was too late.”
Moderate: Death
Minor: Xenophobia and Injury/Injury detail
teaxmillions's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Moderate: Death
tallulahlucy's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Graphic: Cursing, Death, Drug use, Grief, and Alcohol
Moderate: Colonisation and Classism
Minor: Bullying and Confinement
solenekeleroux's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
Graphic: Death and Grief
Moderate: Drug use and Xenophobia