A multi-generational starship heads to Tau Ceti, a star system 11.9 light-years away. Shaped like two giant wheels with spokes, the ship is made up of biomes named for familiar places they most resemble: Nova Scotia, Siberia, Costa Rica.
Though traveling through space, the colonists age as they would on Earth. Freya is the young daughter of the ship's lead engineer, Devi, and her husband, Badim. Their family has known only life aboard their vessel. Devi problem solves and fixes everything that breaks down on the long 200-year voyage out to Tau Ceti; she is much needed. Freya--a third-generation colonist--is a little slow mentally, but kind. As she matures into a young woman, she wanders throughout the ship, meeting everyone, becoming as well known as her prickly, hyper-intelligent mother, who is also helping educate the ship's A.I. to become self-aware.
When the colonists arrive at their destination, the moon Aurora, they discover that they cannot survive there. Freya's wandering has endeared her to a large group of the colonists, and she leads one faction of the dwindling population back toward Earth, with new research from the home planet to help the ship get there safely; other groups choose to travel to nearby planets, set to hunker down and terraform across hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Kim Stanley Robinson (Shaman) weaves Aurora into a thoughtful, intricate, highly scientific story of interplanetary colonization based on the physics of our own universe, yet never loses sight of the very real social dramas contained in this spacefaring microcosm of human life. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor