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grav_ityThis book has everything I love in a space opera: deep faith, high stakes, endless questions about humanity, and a cast that shows the best (and less-best) of what we might become. Basically, humanity is on a fleet of star ships, looking for a habitable planet. Over the decades, the fleet has stratified into seven levels, and a group called the Fractionists thinks that the ships should go apart from each other in order to better their search odds.
On top of this are the Scela, humans who have volunteered their bodies for the fleet's police force. It's a procedure not everyone survives, as people are essentially grafted into a machine that they then co-exist with, but our MCs are both Scela, one by desperation (the pay is good), and one who just woke up in her new body with no recollection of how it came to be.
The world-building is really, really good. Skrutskie put so much thought into how the Scela work (there's a mental component as well as a physical one), and that extends to the fleet as well as to individual characters. The in-world words flow naturally, and it was a humanity I believed, basically. It's been a while since I've read a space book that felt this real. I enjoyed it immensely.
Hullmetal Girls comes out in July, but you can pre-order it. And I think you should.
On top of this are the Scela, humans who have volunteered their bodies for the fleet's police force. It's a procedure not everyone survives, as people are essentially grafted into a machine that they then co-exist with, but our MCs are both Scela, one by desperation (the pay is good), and one who just woke up in her new body with no recollection of how it came to be.
The world-building is really, really good. Skrutskie put so much thought into how the Scela work (there's a mental component as well as a physical one), and that extends to the fleet as well as to individual characters. The in-world words flow naturally, and it was a humanity I believed, basically. It's been a while since I've read a space book that felt this real. I enjoyed it immensely.
Hullmetal Girls comes out in July, but you can pre-order it. And I think you should.
