Yume Kitasei‘s 2023 novel, The Deep Sky, is a welcome addition to the “generation ship” genre, aimed at a YA audience (if the term “generation ship” is unfamiliar, it refers to stories set on spaceships designed for extraordinarily long–usually multi-generational–journeys, most often to new worlds).
The Deep Sky is engaging, thought-provoking, and, if you overlook some relatively obvious flaws in its underlying geopolitical premise, pretty much a delight. The protagonist is full of self-doubt, and struggling to understand why they were offered a spot on the ship in the first place (all of the inhabitants are female, as birthing the next generation en route to humanity’s new home is part of their mission).
The portrayal of mid-and-late-teen female friendship, both on the ship and on flashbacks to the training program back on Earth, is genuine, affecting, and powerful, and the coming-of-age nature of the narrative, while predictable at the widest perspective, is a competent, nicely paced whodunnit.
Recommended for YA readers, especially for those looking for ways into various forms of sci-fi and looking for an alternative to the historical boy/man-ness of the genre.
There are relationships here with Some Desperate Glory as entry points into a different take on sci-fi and with To Shape a Dragon’s Breath in terms of young, feminist (or, at least, proto-feminist) fiction.