Synopsis:

In 2088, humankind is at last ready to explore beyond Earth’s solar system. But one uncertainty remains: Where do we go?

Astrophysicist Reggie Straifer has an idea. He’s discovered an anomalous star that appears to defy the laws of physics, and proposes the creation of a deep-space mission to find out whether the star is a weird natural phenomenon, or something manufactured.

The journey will take eons. In order to maintain the genetic talent of the original crew, humankind’s greatest ambition—to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy—is undertaken by clones. But a clone is not a perfect copy, and each new generation has its own quirks, desires, and neuroses. As the centuries fly by, the society living aboard the nine ships (designated “Convoy Seven”) changes and evolves, but their mission remains the same: to reach Reggie’s mysterious star and explore its origins—and implications.

A mosaic novel of discovery, Noumenon—in a series of vignettes—examines the dedication, adventure, growth, and fear of having your entire world consist of nine ships in the vacuum of space. The men and women, and even the AI, must learn to work and live together in harmony, as their original DNA is continuously replicated and they are born again and again into a thousand new lives. With the stars their home and the unknown their destination, they are on a voyage of many lifetimes—an odyssey to understand what lies beyond the limits of human knowledge and imagination.

Rating:

Review:

I came to read this book in a somewhat interesting way. I was given an ARC for the 3rd book in the series, which I accepted without being aware that it was the 3rd book in a series. Once I started reading it, I realized that I needed more backstory for this one and I didn’t think it was fair to read and rate the ARC copy if I wasn’t familiar with the series.

Which brings me to reading this book, the first in the series. Surprisingly this one was a difficult one for me to rate and equally difficult to review. There were some parts of this book that I felt deserved 5 stars. And some parts that deserved 1 or 2. So, a 3 star overall rating seems fair. This is definitely not a hard science fiction book, if you’re looking for one of those then move on to the next one. It’s more fair to call this one a character study in space. Which I liked!

The most interesting portions of this book were the AI system for me. It was compelling and riveting and I wanted to see how the storyline developed. Frankly, I would have sacrificed a lot of the other storylines that weren’t nearly as interesting if we could spend more time with the AI. It was such an interesting problem. You have an intelligent AI system that watches generation after generation of humans (who it is programmed to care about and take care of) pass away and be replaced by another clone of that person, who is the same but not really the same. How can an AI grieve when the ones that are lost are still there? But also not there? I loved that so much and it was my favorite part of the book.

Unfortunately, because of the writing style there was a lot of jumping around with no warning. All of sudden you’re in the middle of a mutiny situation. Then just as suddenly we’ve arrived at the star system and completed 20 years of observation and we’re going home. Then we’re all having an identity crisis on why Earth feels like home even though it shouldn’t. Big, big time jumps between the vignettes and I felt like we lost a lot of great potential story in the middle. I also had a hard time becoming attached to any of the characters because they were going to be replaced by their next clone shortly, and I might not hear from them again until 200 years and 40 clones later.

Honestly, I was kind of surprised that in the course of 1 book we made a thousand year journey to the stars, 20 years of study, 1000 years back to earth, and then time on earth. It’s A LOT. I felt like just the journey to the star system could have covered an entire book. As such, it felt like the story remained very surface level because there was just too much material for 420 pages.

Overall I enjoyed the book and will continue to the next one, but with some reservations.