Review - "Do You Dream of Terra-Two?"

Do You Dream Of Terra-Two?
by Temi Oh
rating: ☆☆☆ 1/2
published: 7th March 2019
spoilers? not really

Goodreads

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? is an alternate history where a planet with life-sustaining capabilities has been discovered and, in 2012, the first expedition is sent out to try and colonise it. It's the story of the six young astronauts who go on that 23-year-long mission, and their journey into space.

This isn't an action-packed book, far from it. It's a character-driven novel, where you might start out thinking you don't really like all of the characters, but most of them grow on you slowly and sneakily. It's a long book (over 500 pages), and you get POVs from every character (though some more than others), so you really get to understand each of them, their worries and their motivations. Which is good, don't get me wrong. I did like that aspect of it. However, for three quarters of the book, there was hardly any conflict (or, what conflict there was happened quickly and ended quickly too) or action. And I was mostly fine with that (for once. You know me and action), but around two thirds through I did start getting a little bored. The last quarter of the book was amazing, because things were happening, but between two thirds through and three quarters, I felt like it drifted a little.

Linked to that, the number of POVs was a little overwhelming at times. On the one hand, it was good to see all the characters, but on the other, I wasn't all that interested in one or two of them, so I kind of skimmed their parts. The switches between the POVs sometimes felt really abrupt, almost as if there should have been more to come, which got cut out. That also contributed to the plot occasionally feeling kind of bitty, like getting snapshots of their life instead of a continuous arc. (Which, I get because it covers a whole year in a 23-year mission, but I did feel like maybe it could have been woven together a bit more seamlessly at points.)

Because it was so bitty, the conflict that did happen before 75% felt almost like neither it nor the aftermath of it were given time to develop. For the buildup that was less of a problem, because there was always some undercurrent of it running through previous parts, but I definitely thought sometimes the aftermath could have done with being dwelt on a bit longer (or even the conflict itself at points). I had a similar issue with the declaration of love, because that distinctly felt like it came out of nowhere. Although it wasn't underdeveloped, it could have done with even more development.

This may all sound somewhat negative, but I did enjoy this book, for sure. Like I said, for most of it I didn't mind the character-driven aspect, and I really loved the last quarter. And the kind of forced found family trope was done pretty well too (so much that I was really sad about the ending). It's just that one twelfth of the story where it started to drag and I got bored that's made me rate this 3.5 stars instead of 4.