This book has everything: a messiah complex, a murder mystery, space hoarding, a womb city, and so many 3D printers it will blow your mind. What really inspired me to plow through this one was the humility and realism of the main character's visceral struggle with mental illness superimposed over the origin story of a colonial society born of what could be termed a different species of the same animal. Renata, our touchstone and narrator through the book, is buried twenty-two years into life on a colony built on the foundation of the holy vision of her best friend, now believed by the colonists to be communing with God in an alien city. There are so many secrets swirling inside Ren about how they arrived and survived that it's slowly tearing her apart.
Something about this book feels genuine and naked and sharp when it comes to how Ren lives with the weight of her history at the foot of the God city. She's brilliant, driven, empathetic, but broken, and her humanity hangs out everywhere as she and the mystery of the colony and a new visitor, the grandson of Ren's prophetic BFF, unravel. I can't say the end of this book came a total surprise; maybe it was the path of least creative resistance to wind up where it wound up, but by the time I got there I didn't care. The rest of the ride was such a glorious gut punch that the journey more than made up for it.
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