A spectacular science fiction debut, Adam Oyebanji’s Braking Day tells a gripping story of a generations-long mission approaching its end, and the prejudices and politics of a community torn between a troubled past and an unknown future. As the three ships of the generation fleet approach ‘Braking Day’ – the point at which they start to decelerate ready to reach their destination at long last – aboard the Interstellar Vehicle Archimedes trainee engineer Ravi MacLeod is being worked harder than ever. Struggling with the requirements of his studies to become an officer and the suspicion of his family towards those of the officer class, Ravi finds himself caught between two worlds. When he starts seeing impossible things he worries that the stress is getting to him, but it soon becomes clear that something strange is going on, and beneath the surface of the fleet there are tensions starting to come to a head.
The central core of the story here is really smart, with the impending Braking Day providing instant tension within the crew of the Archimedes. Everyone on board was born aboard the ship, and for all that they understand the fleet’s overall mission (to escape a homeworld controlled by artificial intelligences known as LOKIs – which are banned within the fleet) nobody knows what they’ll find when they reach their destination. There’s a lot to enjoy here in Oyebanji’s nuanced, thoughtful depiction of life for those who have only ever known the limits of a starship and the void of space. Ravi, his troublemaker cousin Boz, his friends and family and all the other people on the ship, they’re all intimately familiar with their own technological enhancements and comfortable leaping around the ship in low or zero gravity, but they’re baffled by anything lo-tech and thoroughly disconcerted by the thought of life on a planet – it’s a brilliant portrayal, full of subtle and believable details.
There’s lots of cool SF technology on display, but while all the obvious SF elements help to create a vivid and lived-in setting, they ultimately take a back seat to the sense of reality to the culture and society that’s developed on the ship. This close-focus approach to world building, concentrating much more on the here and now that the characters inhabit rather than going into too much backstory or detail of the wider galaxy, gives the characters themselves plenty of room to breathe. Ravi in particular makes for a fantastic protagonist, pulled in different directions by his attempt to build a better life for himself and the stigma attached to his family name (the MacLeod’s are considered troublemakers by most of the other families aboard). He’s both helped and hindered by his brilliant but dangerous cousin Boz, who lives very much on the edge, constantly pushing back against authority and in many respects conforming to the expectation of a MacLeod.
Oyebanji has taken a brilliant central concept and built a believable world around it, populated by detailed, relatable characters full of hopes and dreams, prejudices, preconceptions and all the everyday concerns and worries that you’d expect in real life…but adjusted to fit this SF setting with all its unique risks and advantages. And this is a genuinely fascinating depiction of what it might be like growing up and living on board a ship travelling through space, with a strangely haunting blend of beauty and terror underpinning everything. That edge of fear, with the deadly void all around, adds a thrilling sense of tension (and at times creepiness) to a perfectly paced plot, with a compelling mix of excitement and intrigue that’s as effective in the macro sense – with the future of the fleet at stake – as the micro – with Ravi and Boz’s lives and futures in question. All told, this is space-set science fiction at its best.
Many thanks to Jo Fletcher Books and Adam Oyebanji for sending me a review copy of Braking Day in exchange for my honest opinions.
Braking Day is published on the 5th April by Jo Fletcher Books in the UK, and by DAW Books in the US.
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