Thursday, May 30, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Do You Dream of Terra-Two by Temi Oh




Do You Dream of Terra-Two is the debut novel from British writer Temi Oh, and on paper it's very much the type of book I might love.  My favorite books tend to be character-focused more than idea or plot-focused, where an overarching plot is less important than character arcs and developments.  A classic example of this is Becky Chambers' Wayfarer series (which Do You Dream of Terra-Two's blurb actually compares itself too - "A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet meets The 100!"), which often consist of little overarching plot and instead a series of stories based upon a few characters as they grow and try to deal with the circumstances they live within.  And I love the Wayfarer series,, with me putting the most recent one on the top of my Best Novel list.

Do You Dream of Terra-Two, whose "plot" can be quickly summed up as "six 19 year olds go on a journey through space to a new world and try to deal with their own traumas, relationships and selves," would seem thus just like my cup of tea.  But the book has some issues Wayfarers definitely doesn't - mainly that it doesn't seem able to juggle each of its 6 main characters and their arcs to give each enough time to develop, and at times fails to really differentiate its characters as a result.  There's some interesting stuff here for sure, and some interesting character developments, but the book felt very much like it still needed another phase of editing to clear things up and to give each character the time to shine they deserved.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
The discovery of an Earth-Like planet, dubbed Terra-Two, reachable within 23 years of space travel, changes the world.  In this world, humanity has already reached Mars, and even has put people on a Station to study and change Europa, but the idea of reaching a new planet already ready for life takes root quickly.  And so the UK Space Agency put together a plan: together with a few crew members experienced with space-travel, a team of teenagers would be picked from thousands of applicants to be trained for going on the journey to first set down roots on Terra-Two.  Trained from the ages of 12-13 to 19-20, the candidates would be weeded down to six selectees - the "Beta" - each with their own specialties, along with a few alternates in case of a last minute problem.

But right from the start, things begin to go wrong with the mission, with one of the six's death causing the need for one of the alternates to join the remaining five members of the Beta on the journey through Space. And as the journey progresses, and Beta members find that the stresses of their lost friend, of leaving home, of having no one else to interact with, causes them each difficulties in their own ways.  Will the Beta be able to learn to live together and with themselves during the 23 year journey?  And if they're all having such problems when everything is seemingly going according to plan, what would happen when anything goes wrong?
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Do You Dream of Terra-Two is told entirely from the perspectives of its six teenage crew members, the so-called Beta.  The book alternates between the viewpoints fairly often, although a few of the 6 teens - most notably Juno and Jesse - do seem to get a significantly higher page-time than others.  The story is generally chronological, with time and dates at the start of each segment of text to show how much time has passed, although flashback segments are not that uncommon.

As I mentioned above the jump, the story really isn't about any overriding plot, but rather about how these teenagers (well they're 19-20 by the end of the story) cope and handle the situation they're placed in, starting with the intense training they underwent to get selected for the journey, suffering a pre-journey tragedy in their friend's suicide requiring a last minute substitution of an outsider, and then the pressures of being forced into a cramped space where their only accompaniment - aside from the four adult crew members - is each other.

For some of these characters, the story works a lot better than others.  As I mentioned above, Jesse is one of two characters who gets seemingly the most screen time, and perhaps unsurprisingly his arc works the best.  He's easily the most well-defined character from the start, having due to some weird circumstances been desperate to make the Beta (believing that a prophecy meant that either he'd make it or he'd die based upon its wording) and then only making it due to the suicide of one of the original members picked ahead of him.  The result however is that the other 5 members of the Beta can't help but resent him from the start, and Jesse's awkward nature doesn't help matters, and the book does a great job showing his character arc in a really sympathetic and relateable way.  Juno's arc, after a weak start, also is pretty strong, as she attempts in vain to try and get the 6 teens to work together towards what she thinks is a necessary new start, only to encounter resistance to her good intentioned by high-handed methods. 

Still, not every character works particularly well.  One of the six, Harry, seems just like an utter jackass for the first 3/4 of the book, and the rare chapter from his POV just isn't enough to humanize him to make him sympathetic enough for me to not want the other characters to just not put up with his shit.  Astrid's arc seems really muddled at the start - as is Juno's to be honest - to the point where I had a hard time figuring out what really made each of the two of them (they're twins) who they were. Eliot and Poppy both suffer through severe mental traumas, Eliot with Surivor's Guilt and Poppy with Depression, and yet both of their arcs' resolutions seem incredibly abrupt because we don't get enough chapters from their own points of view.

Essentially the story struggles at first to really differentiate the main six with few exceptions so we get to see who they each really are, and then kind of gets lost in Juno and Jesse's arcs to the point where the other characters feel shortchanged.  This is where the Wayfarer comparison fails, as that series does a fantastic job giving each character sufficient page-time to really build their arc and make them interesting to the reader.  Here, I felt for a substantial period of the book, at least for the first half of this 400+ page book, like I really didn't know who some of these major characters were and as such I had a harder time caring about them.  Which is kind of a big problem in a story that's entirely about character.

On a less important but still negative note, the book also kind of bugged me at times because it weirdly takes place in an alternate version of our world - of our present (taking place in 2012) rather than a future version.   Which isn't necessarily a problem if this was ever explained, but it's not - so for example, our heroes are performing interstellar travel in 2012 - yes Two Thousand and Twelve - to a new planet and it's treated as if its totally normal, as is the fact that humans have apparently spent years on Mars or even Europa at the time of this novel.  What changed in our technology to make this possible?  It's never ever explained, it just sort-of is there, and it threw me for a bit of a loop at times.  The fact that this book is so focused on character and not plot is what makes this a minor issue more than anything - the setting is just the grounds for the characters to act, and not really important on its own, but I can't imagine I'm the only reader who will be thrown off by this.

Overall, I wish I liked Do You Dream of Terra-Two more, as its premise and setup promised a really interesting character-based story.  And I'll be interested to see if Temi Oh can improve upon this in future works.  But in this one, she just doesn't do enough to make the characters all work, which just is a problem in this type of work.
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