Much of science fiction is concerned with traveling to distant planets, discovering new life and new environs. A great deal is made of the challenges people and technology would face getting off planet, or surviving a lengthy journey to this new planet. Not so in Emma Newman’s Planetfall. The real story of Newman’s novel is the challenges survivors face on the new planet, not because of environmental challenges or alien life, but the trials of clashing personalities and buried secrets.

Let’s get this out of the way first: Planetfall is not an easy book to discuss without giving away too much about its plot and characters. So I won’t give away too many of the finer details of the plot—what can be said is that approximately 1,000 colonists left Earth, including the protagonist, Renata “Ren” Ghali, who followed Lee Suh-Mi, her lover and leader of this group, to the new planet in what can best be described as a pilgrimage of faith. Earth was not in the best of shape, but there isn’t much more elaboration than that in the plot or background details.  When the colonists arrived on the new planet, Lee entered a pre-existing structure the colonists discovered and came to name God’s City.  When Newman begins the novel 20 odd years later, Lee had yet to return from God’s City and she is revered as something close to a saint as the people await her return and still follow the spirit of her beliefs.
[Let’s Print a House.]