Renata Ghali believed in Lee Suh-Mi’s vision of a world far beyond Earth, a planet promising to reveal the truth about our place in the cosmos, untainted by overpopulation, pollution, and war. Ren believed in that vision enough to give up everything to follow Suh-Mi into the unknown.
More than twenty years have passed since Ren and the rest of the faithful braved the starry abyss and established a colony at the base of an enigmatic alien structure where Suh-Mi has since resided, alone. Ren has worked hard as the colony’s 3-D printer engineer, creating the tools necessary for human survival in an alien environment—and harboring a devastating secret.
For the good of her fellow colonists, Ren continues to perpetuate the lie forming the foundation of the colony, despite the personal cost. Then a stranger appears, far too young to have been part of the first planetfall, a man who bears a remarkable resemblance to Suh-Mi.
The truth Ren has concealed since planetfall can no longer be hidden, and its revelation could tear the colony apart.
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“Newman quickly introduces us to the colony’s de facto leaders, Renata Ghali and Cillian Mackenzie, and reveals that they’re keeping some pretty big secrets. It’s an interesting choice to keep the story’s focus not on the secrets themselves, but on how they’re exposed…Brilliant yet mentally ill, completely unlikable yet poignantly human, and a woman of color besides—Ren is a rare science fiction protagonist, and Newman handles her complexities with aplomb. She doesn’t do nearly as well with the antagonists, who teeter on the line of caricature. But in the story’s tight focus on Ren, these external villains barely matter; her inner demons are the stars of the show. The climax is cathartic and transcendent enough to smooth over any flaws along the way.”
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New York Times Book Review