Braking Day is a sci-fi novel by Adam Oyebanji. It takes place across a small fleet of generation ships, as they come to the end of their journey. Soon, they're going to reach the point at which they beign to slow down ("Braking Day), and prepare to enter and colonise a new star system. But before they do, there are going to be some dark answers given to hard questions. Old mysteries are going to be dug up and dragged into the light. The survival of the society on the ships, indeed the survival of the ships themselves, may hang in the balance.
And the feather tipping that balance is a young man who just wants to be left alone, left to do his job in peace, to maybe get a promotion, to maybe change things a little. He may get rather more than he's bargained for.
All of that sounded rather portentuous, so to save you a longer read, the tl;dr is that Braking Day is a fun, snappy sci-fi yarn. It builds out a believable inter-generational society for its ships, one which has genuine problems baked in, but isn't a theocracy or raving anarchy. It shows us young, smart people trying to do the right thing, and older, debatably as smart people whose perspective on what the right thing is may differ. It explores social class and asks questions about wha we choose to remember and to forget.But in etween the big questions it has a fast-paced action adventure story going on, with a delightful soupcon of mystery about it.
Our protagonist is Ravi Macleod, an officer candidate on one of the ships, and from a family that are very much the wrong side of the tracks. He suffers from discrimination on one side, and from disappointment on the other. His fellow students think he's a criminal, and his family aren't entirely sure he's not becoming just another member of the elite looking to put them down. Ravi, through it all, is thoughtful, conscientious, and perhaps a little prone to being led by his emotions. He carries his flaws well, though, and the story gives him the chance to be articulate and likable. If I was occasionally driven to a shake of the head at a moment of naivete, still it was possible to feel an honest joy in those moments as well, to see someone reaching out for the better option, rather than the least worst. Ravi is an excellent portrayal of a young man stepping out onto unsure footing, looking to find something of himself between the metal walls that he calls home. And he's helped by a rather fun ensemble cast. Honestly, I wanted to see more of all of them, but a shout out in particular to his cousin Boz, a young woman with a word-weary attitude decades odler than she is, but with the fire and ideals to try and make change and break things whe needed. She's an excellent foil for Ravi, and their interplay of outlooks was always a genuine delight.
They exist on one of three generation ships, creaking, much repaired vessels sailing the wine-dark sea of space. Those craft have seen their shar eof triumphs and tragedies etched inot their skins, and we see a lot of references to their history, both implicit and explicit. it's a credit to the author that the Archimedes, Ravi's ship, feels like a real, lived in space. From its battered duct-work to lost compartments, from the engineering core buried levels deep to the bar-slash movie theatre the kids go to, the environment has a humanity to it, an energy which says that this is a real space. Some of that is georpahy played out as politics, too; the tensions between a class of semi-hereditary officers and those beneath them is often palpable. Those at the bottom of the ladder are a few bad choices form being stuffed into the recycler as biomass. The ships feel their age, feel like decisions have been made there, catastrophes and triumphs all - and the socity they've built feels human too. Laced through with flaws, open to corruption, someimes driven by poor or terrible choices, but in the end, something built by people trying to do their best, trying to survive.
And the story. Ah, well, no spoilers. But this one went places I didn't expect from the jump. It's one part mystery, one part coming of age tale, one part adventure epic - and you know what, all of those parts are rather good. Importantly, it asks big questions, human questions, which will make you think - but it asks them while you're having so much fun following along that you may ot notice for a little bit.
In summary, it's a fun story, with interesting things to say, with solid characterisation in a well-drawn world. That makes it a solid purchase, if you're in need of a generation ship mystery (and who isn't?!).
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