Well I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this speculative sci-fi murder mystery debut.

We follow the single perspective of the main character Asuka, and "Alt", essentially a substitute or alternative crew member of the spaceship, The Phoenix, which is tasked with saving humanity by colonizing a distant planet as Future Earth is slowly becoming inhabitable - both based on the deteriorating environment on the planet and the humanity being unable to come together and instead slowly devolving into a global war. An explosion on the ship kills some crew members along with the ship's captain, and Asuka is tasked with leading the investigation to figure out what happened and who is behind the tragedy, all the while knowing that it all may be in vain as the explosion has pushed the ship off of it's path to the new world and there is limited time and resources to correct their course. The plot was engaging, there was a really interesting sort of AI that felt very much like it's own character outside of the ship, and the pacing was consistent. 

Asuka was such a compelling lead character; her biracial identity and the representation and discussion it brought up was everything I've ever wanted to read about as a multi-racial individual that struggles fitting in culturally at times because of how many pockets of culture that I attribute to myself. And the cast of characters in general were also incredibly diverse. I was gritting my teeth every time Asuka was called Susie, I empathized with her with every flashback that gleaned more information as to how Asuka was appointed to the crew and how her relationship with her family, especially her mother, developed and deteriorated; she was a fantastic character and I never got frustrated with her even when I didn't agree with her choices. 

There was no romance, despite there being some 2SLGBTQIA+ representation in other characters, but there were a lot of relationship dynamics explored in terms of friendship and colleagues stuck in a forced proximity by virtue of the entire present story-line taking place on a spaceship charted for a new planet for humanity to inhabit. Asuka's friendship with Ruth was contentious for almost the entirety of the story, and I did think that their conflict was resolved way too easily, more out of necessity than anything and not in any sort of elaborate way - and yet I still really enjoyed the friendship at it's core because they were different people who still cared about one another in spite of those differences. 

The ending left some questions unanswered and didn't so much conclude so much as end, but I still enjoyed myself so much more than I thought was going to. I don't exactly know what I expected out of this debut, but it delivered something that I think I needed to read anyways.