A Republic of Memory by Mahmud El Sayed

TL;DR: A great debut about a generation ship and the weight and division of language.
Source: NetGalley, thank you so much!

Plot: Pacing was a bit rough, but overall a fascinating plot setup for a series.
Characters: I really liked all of the characters we got here.
Setting: The ship felt really real. It wasn’t super clear visually but it felt like part of the story.
Sci-fi: A great execution of the generation ship idea.

Summary:

The Safina is a city ship, two hundred years into its voyage from the ruins of Earth towards a new habitable world. Its crew maintain the ship, generation after generation, while protecting their ‘ancestors’ – the final remnants of Earth’s doomed Network Empire – by keeping them alive in cryostasis.

But a lot can change in two hundred years, and people are starting to ask questions. Why should the crew continue to toil for people none of them remember? What exactly gives Administration its authority over everyone else?

And when the blackouts start, they set in motion a chain of events that will change life on the Safina forever. A reckoning is coming. The system is only secure so long as those in power maintain the obedience of those beneath them.

And the crew has had enough.

Thoughts:

There is a lot to unpack with this one so I’m going to try to keep from rambling. The Republic of Memory really shows us the cyclical nature of history. The generation ship Safina set out from Earth, divided by language. The idea was, you can always learn a new language. But things never stay the way they’re intended. Things change, systems are removed, added, and adjusted.

This novel shows us a ship on the verge of tumbling into revolution. We get multiple PoVs throughout this. Some want revolution, some want just to exist and live, others don’t know what they want and end up swept away. This one also does a thing I love, making up a language and forcing us as the reader to adapt.

This is a fantastic SF story. The pacing needs a bit of work, the jumps between PoVs really do change the story at times but it’s so worth the read and I can’t recommend it enough for my fellow language fans. I cannot wait to see where this goes.