I really dislike giving two-star reviews to books that I kinda liked. But that is this book. At several points, I thought, "Oh, here we go, now we're... oh, nevermind." The starting seemed YA-ish, and then I thought it was going to pick up a more adult voice: wait, nope. The mysterious alien artifacts are speaking directly into the main character's (clone's) mind: wait, nope. The ship AI goes all HAL 9000: wait, nope (it can't even seem to go HAL 100.) Earth is mysteriously silent, did something happen: wait, nope.

Then there is the "sci"-fi part of this. This fails in so many small ways. I have my own "theories" of sci-fi (don't explain the tech, fail in one big way because people will just build the universe around that, etc.) This book shows why. Attempts are made right and left to say in throw-off ways how stuff works, and it fails. E.g. they need long-term storage of information that is incorruptible. The solution? Single copies stored on DNA... so that even low levels of ionizing radiation corrupt it, or reading the DNA destroys it (which seems to be a misunderstanding/translation of what happens inside biological DNA systems...) Why not store the information in a more durable format? Or store a billion copies in DNA? Or store the information in multiple locations?

Finally, there is just too much here. The episodic/generational storytelling doesn't work here because there is too much. I think (well, clearly) the author was trying to get into the evolution (or, perhaps, chaotic development) of societies, but... it's just not executed well enough. We're the pinnacle of social evolution (...including being genetically optimal.) Now we're deciding to filter out/genocide-lite "lines" of people because of mental illness, rebellion, suicide, etc. (Ok, so-far so-Nazi.) Now we have a slave society. Now we get rid of slavery, but we've got a (still genetically based) social hierarchy. Meanwhile, back on Earth, everyone is navel-gazing or entertained to death or just living their lives (its abundantly unclear) but has decided (and stayed decided, for like 2000 years), that nothing else is interesting other than their semi-uploaded reality... except that there is still a scarcity economy and something like mercantilism or maybe state capitalism around... coffee and chocolate (because terrorists blew up the seedbanks.)

WTF? Why stop there. Add some grey-goo, a religious cult, and a couple of kitchen sinks.

Actually, why am I giving this two stars? Mostly for my residual high hopes, I think. ( )

The structure was interesting -- more a collection of novellas strung together to span a greater time span. A good AI characters and an interesting sociology-driven plot. ( )

4 stars

I'll never understand publishers' insistence on building up expectations for a book by comparing it to legends (and then bypassing the obvious comparison that would be Tau Zero in this case).

First fumbling block for me with this book was the writing. I can't pin point what it is, but the writing just didn't flow for me. It worked a lot better after I started listening to this on audio, but it still wasn't quite to my tastes. The writing wasn't bad by any means, simply not to my tastes.

The book handled some really interesting concepts from cloning as procreation to (anthropomorphized) AI to time dilation to the stages a closed society goes through during centuries in deep the space. Oddly enough, this book also had me in tears a couple of times, which gives it bonus points.

The development of the humans on Earth during the couple millennia between launch and re-entry was at first interesting, but in the end somewhat disappointing. I feel like the author could have done that more cleanly, as now it just felt somehow hurried and underdeveloped. But still, not bad. (The language of the current Earthlings was a little ehhh, though.)

I wish the book would have focused more on the focus of the journey and what they found, but I guess that's what we have the second book for.
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Re-read 03/2021 in preparation for the third part. Still a solid four star. ( )

If I told you what I liked about this, I'd probably spoil some part of it. It isn't perfect—I kept thinking of Becky Chambers' generation fleet—but this has its own charms. ( )

A bit too open ended for my liking. ( )