Marrow

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 1 MAY 2000

A ship the size of a large planet drifts through space far into the future, setting the stage for Reed's sweeping allegory dramatizing such cosmological questions as the origins of the universe and the relative nature of size and time. Humans are practically immortal with the improvements of bioceramics and repairing genes, allowing Reed (Beyond the Veil of Stars), a multiple Hugo nominee, to track the lives of the Great Ship's crew members and passengers through millennia. The Master Captain has directed every aspect of the ship via her implanted nexuses ever since human explorers first boarded the seemingly empty, ancient vessel, finding the enormous, lifeless ship equipped with adjustable environments that would allow them to create oceans and cities. The human colonists turn the ship into a luxury passenger cruiser carrying 100 billion members of various alien species. The Master and her captains administer the journey according to plans made eons into the past, handily neutralizing any threats or disruptions until the Master mysteriously sends over 200 of her brightest captains, including her ambitious first-chair, Miocene, and the talented alien greeter Washen, on an exploratory mission to what was thought to be the ship's solid iron core. Disaster befalls their mission, unleashing a 5,000-year course of events that will build a new civilization and eventually threaten the existence of the entire ship. The ship itself narrates italicized introductions to each of the book's five parts with thorny, theatrical language, echoing the ship's obtuse, unwieldy presence. Clumsy dialogue and melodramatic scenes render the human dramas far less consequential than the monumental construct in which they play. However, Reed's ambitious, detailed premise and thoughtful manipulations of space and time make for an enjoyable reflection on the size and shape of the universe relative to its human inhabitants.