A review by bhawargi
Braking Day by Adam Oyebanji

4.25

This is the first debut book that I'm rating this highly. The world is intense, rich and full. It feels methodically written - perfectly captures the essence of what life on a generational, star-bound ship would feel like. The concepts of interacting with the world around through "code" was fascinating(something I wish I could do in the real world.) It did start off to slip in the second half and the end feels kinda inconclusive.

Summary: We follow the story of Engineer trainee Ravinder, a descendant of the low standing family line of the Macleods. He imagines seeing a girl in hard vacuum without a suit. She keeps trying to warn him but he isn't able to make much of it. That is until his condition progresses. When Ravi's hallucinations become verbose, we learn of the existence of a fourth ship (Newton) that launched simultaneously with the first three (Archimedes, Bohr & Chandrashekar). This newly discovered ship belongs to an opposing faction of humanity, who have been supportive of LOKIs (AIs of a sort) but against human augmentations and hence named Human Heritage.  Due to a plague which broke out shortly after launch, most of its population has been decimated and vengeful about having been damned by the other 3 ships. They are preparing for and plan on blowing up the fleet when transponders and drives go online on Braking day.

Enter the imaginary girl, Lisette Ansimov, who is from a peace loving sub-faction within the Human-heritage. She manages to hack into Ravi's cybernetic implants and communicates a plan to stop the war. The plan is convert the dragons (a fleet of 9 warships LOKIs) to elevate themselves to peacekeeper position by threatening both Newton and the 3-ship fleet. There is some minor drama about a bomb on the drives but that is averted in a chapter