12 year old Petra Pena wants to be a storyteller like her grandmother, but her scientist parents are pushing her in their direction instead. When Halley’s Comet is knocked into a collision course with Earth, humanity doesn’t have long to scramble and get as many people off the planet as they can. Petra and her family are among those chosen to leave on three ships, heading for an inhabitable planet named Sagan. But she has to leave her beloved grandmother behind.
Once on the ship, the civilians are to be put in sleeping pods and wake at their new planet, which is over 300 years away. They will be tended to by monitors who will live out their lives, and several generations, on the ship. But when Petra wakes, a sinister Collective has taken over the ship and reprogrammed the memories of those sleeping. If the reprogramming didn’t work, those people have been purged. Dedicated to erasing the sins of humanity’s past, The Collective lives to serve itself.
But Petra remembers. She carries the stories of the past. Can sharing them with others like her get them to remember too? And can they escape the ship before she is found out?
This is a beautifully written tale. It’s quite sad and dark in places, given how much is lost throughout. But its another book that leans into hope. The hope that you can change the past, that one person can make a difference, and that choosing to be brave and do the seemingly impossible will end in a good result. Petra works throughout to help the other children who have been woken, a cohort where they are all named Zetas (Zeta-1 etc), while trying to not only keep her secret safe, but also protecting the planet they have come to from the Collective as well. There were a few moments where it got a bit hard going for me because there is so much loss, on a grand and small scale, but overall I really enjoyed it. It reminds me a little, in theme anyway, of Station Eleven. Stories matter to humanity very much. Survival is insufficient, as they say.
