This novel held my interest long enough to finish it, but I skipped bits here and there and wasn't really very happy with it overall since it made little sense far too often to let it slide.
It's a sci-fi story about a colony ship that takes almost 200 years to reach another planet. They're sent there because Earth is so trashed and they don't think it can support any more humans. They fear humanity will die out, but given how much it had to have cost to build the ship, I don't get how people couldn't have improved conditions on Earth dramatically with all those resources, thereby avoiding the need to go elsewhere, but again, and foolishly as it happened(!), I let that slide.
The idea is that there are genetically generated farmers who have hardiness and skills for farming, as well as a smaller crew of scientists who support them. Again this made no sense: if their genetic engineering is so advanced on Earth, how come they had such trouble surviving there? Later in the story, it comes out that people on Earth have been largely wiped out by a new flu strain (this was written before Covid), yet they have advanced genetic engineers? They couldn't fix the flu? We're on the verge of doing that now, but these future people couldn't do it? Once again, it made no sense!
So these colonists are exploring this planet, but they seem to have no advanced technology: no satellites that can do a decent survey from space. No drones to survey the place at near ground level; no robots to help on the ground? Again, it made no sense. We have all of those things now. Why would they not have them in the future?
On top of this, there's a rebel movement which has people embedded in the colony who are trying to sabotage it. They're apparently up in arms against the unnatural aspects of this genetic engineering, but then why go on the ship? Why not just let 'em go, and say good riddance, and stay on Earth to enjoy their natural life? This was not a religious order, so there was none of that fanaticism; just the 'natural' PoV, and it wasn't enough to account for the behavior.
The book description is all about this Cariad character who is one of the scientists and who plays a relatively minor role in the colonization. The main character who gets no mention in the description is Ethan, who is a 'gen' - genetically developed 'farmer' - who is a respected leader in the farming community. The thing is that the farming community never actually does any farming! Farming is a full-time job, but though Ethan has his own farm, he never goes there. He's never shown working. In fact he gets so distracted that he neglects his farm to the point where it could well be failing - he doesn't know. He hasn't been there in a while.
The gens decide to quietly abandon the colony to start their own independent colony on the coast, where they occupy a series of caves and tunnels in the cliff face by the ocean. They have to explore these caves on foot with torches because they apparently never heard of drones. It made no sense. One of the gens is the saboteur, but that made no sense either because this person had no training in explosives and no clue as to where to put them since there had been no extensive survey of the caves to find the weak spots, yet the caves are effectively destroyed and many lives are risked!
This goes to my point, which I think I've demonstrated conclusively by now, that if the story isn't getting it done, you need to quit gamely plodding on to the end and ditch it for something that will entertain. It's not worth wasting your time on something that's failing you. I can't commend this as a worthy read because it was so badly-written.
