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Wow. This is absolutely top notch, classy stuff. You don't get much in the way of hard sci fi in young adult writing, but ''WE'' makes me wonder why. It's beautifully written, with a sparse and elegant style that suits both the isolation of the environment and the isolation of its central character who feels so radically disabled by the wrench of the break from the WE. The main theme is clear - it's the age old trade-off between the rights of the individual and the collective. But it's also about alienation and anomie, about the search for the new, and about that most basic of instincts - the need to reproduce.
It feels very claustrophobic, but its ideas are expansive. There's a great deal to think about. Tension builds remorselessly and I became utterly absorbed in Paul's struggle to make sense of what's going on and once he has, to decide - ''by himself'' - what he should do about it. The crew may see itself themselves as cut off from Earth, but much of the time they are equally cut off from one another. The conflicts are painful, not just for Paul and the others, but for the reader too. It's an immensely rewarding book: demanding but beautiful - and as suitable for adults as it is for older teenagers. The science is perfectly rendered - complex, but comprehensible to a duffer like me, the characters are charismatic, and the scope is both intensely concentrated and dramatically expansive. I can't recommend it highly enough.
My thanks to the nice people at David Fickling for sending the book.