Ratings6
Average rating3.2
Canada’s Aurora Award for Best Young Adult Novel 2015 When seventeen-year-old Toby McGonigal finds himself lost in space, separated from his family, he expects his next drift into cold sleep to be his last. After all, the planet he's orbiting is frozen and sunless, and the cities are dead. But when Toby wakes again, he's surprised to discover a thriving planet, a strange and prosperous galaxy, and something stranger still—that he's been asleep for 14,000 years. Welcome to the Lockstep Empire, where civilization is kept alive by careful hibernation. Here cold sleeps can last decades and waking moments mere weeks. Its citizens survive for millennia, traveling asleep on long voyages between worlds. Not only is Lockstep the new center of the galaxy, but Toby is shocked to learn that the Empire is still ruled by its founding family: his own. Toby's brother Peter has become a terrible tyrant. Suspicious of the return of his long-lost brother, whose rightful inheritance also controls the lockstep hibernation cycles, Peter sees Toby as a threat to his regime. Now, with the help of a lockstep girl named Corva, Toby must survive the forces of this new Empire, outwit his siblings, and save human civilization. Karl Schroeder's Lockstep is a grand innovation in hard Science Fiction space opera.
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Overall:A fast paced YA appropriate Science Fiction story with plenty of food for thought about our role in society and how our experiences shape who we are. After 1st Reading: A great adventure story that would be great for YA readers but has a lot of good food for thought for older readers. It's great to have a real modern SF story for YAs that isn't just near-future Dystopian Hunger Games. This has space ships and deep questions about the organisation of society, a good and exciting step into the world of SF - I could almost believe this was a YA by [a:Alastair Reynolds 51204 Alastair Reynolds https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1521740247p2/51204.jpg] .After 2nd Reading I agree with what I said before, but this time round I was really struck by how much detail and discussion about self determination and government types was included. Good Science Fiction always has a balance between a good story that pulls you forward and thought experiments that make you question. I remembered that this book had a great fun story with an interesting idea - I'd forgotten just how thought provoking it was too.