Oh how quickly can things change. One day, you're lying down on your grandmother's lap, listening to one of the hundreds of stories she has up her sleeve, gently playing with your hair while you lose yourself in her tale, the breeze of the desert and the distant howling of the coyotes colouring the experience, and a week after, you're on a space ship, being hurled away from earth as it gets demolished by a comet, destroying almost everyone and everything you held dear to your heart.To survive that trauma, all you have left are your memories, and the stories passed down to you by your ancestors, stories you must fight to keep telling, to make the people with you, the fellow earthlings who are also escaping the destruction, remember who they really are and where they came from. This is the story of Petra Peña, who is one of the lucky chosen ones, alongside her parents and younger brother, to board a space ship that is destined to eventually land on a distant planet called Sagan, to ensure the survival of the human race after Halley's comet hits Earth. Petra and her family were supposed to be put to sleep and wake up hundreds of years later, once the spaceship has safely arrived to Sagan.

However, something goes terribly wrong when Petra finds herself alone when she wakes up from her centuries-long slumber, with the ship having been taken over by a group of rebels who genetically modified themselves to look like hideous shrimp-like creatures, sabotaged the original plan, wiping off the memories of everyone on the ship, and reprogrammed their minds to blindly serve them, an organization they have named as "The Collective", aimed at completely wiping off all trace of past human memories and putting an end to all forms of individualism, culture and all things that give heart and soul to human beings, under the pretense that this will lead to efficient unity, without any wars or conflict. Though this reality might sound ideal, the actual application of it is ruthlessly pragmatic, with the value of each individual measured solely by their "usefulness", and the second someone ceases to be efficient in the ways that The Collective demands, they are instantly killed.Petra was lucky enough to keep her memories due to a malfunction in the system, but she now has to figure out a way to escape this spaceship, while pretending to have her memories erased, taking with her the few "friends" she found who were not as lucky as her and have had their memories lost, but who seem strangely receptive to the stories she tells them, stories passed down to her by her grandmother Lita.

This is a middle-grade SF novel, an interesting choice since I don't really see many SF books being targeted to that age group. The story is filled with suspense throughout, and I was constantly in a state of worry and anticipation, waiting to see how Petra would be able to outsmart the soulless creatures of The Collective, creatures who were once human beings. There is a great deal of sentimentality and a concentration on the importance of identity, and the themes explored in this book are quite mature, delivered in a digestible way to the young target audience. There's a beautiful contrast between the lush past on Earth, with all of its nature, warmth and stories, and the cold, metallic and bleak reality inside the spaceship. The sense of distance from Earth in the depths of space is felt quite strongly, and memories and stories are seen as delicate threads that bind our characters to the bright past, making the bleak present seem tolerable.There is hope however, when Petra and her teammates are sent down to the new planet Sagan to collect samples of wildlife and test whether it's inhabitable for The Collective. This new planet, with a smaller sun that casts a constant orange/purple light on one side of the planet, is lush and teeming with life, and is the perfect opportunity to rebuild the life lost on Earth, and perhaps, do better than those who came before, who, alongside bright cultures and stories, have also brought war and destruction.

I wish we got to spend more time on this planet, but the story was mainly centered around life on the spaceship. I think despite seemingly being a standalone, this book could benefit from having a sequel which focuses on exploring the new planet more.The ending, although nicely written, felt like it left some loose ends that were not explored sufficiently. I wanted to find out more about The Collective, about their leader's past, more in-depth motivations. Some plot conveniences that helped Petra felt forced and not really explained sufficiently, and Petra's eye condition, which blurs her vision and was a source of tension at the very beginning, suddenly stopped being at the second half of the book, which involved a lot exploration and vision use. Despite these little complaints, I did enjoy this story and it does a nice job making SF be accessible to a younger audience. The last chapter in the book was very exciting to get through, and left me craving a sequel.


 “Suma's eyes are still closed, and I can't tell if she's trying to forget, or to remember. Maybe stories are there to help us do both. I know stories can't always have happy endings. But if there are chances for us to do better, we have to say out loud the parts that hurt the most.”