SOJALS rating:

Very good (3/5)

I first read this on the 7th April 2003.

The Flying Dutchman is one of mankind's first starships. It is a vast craft constructed from an asteroid. It is bearing 72,000 people h heading out from Earth to the stars.

Melpomene is a thirteen-year-old girl living on the spacecraft. She is a very clever child in a superb educational system. She's the privileged product of the best that civilisation can offer.

Of course things are never quite that simple and Melpomene's innocent childhood quickly comes to an upsetting end. She must reappraise everyone she trusted, and everything in which she believed.

John Barnes does a Heinlein for the '90s in this coming-of-age novel. This is a superbly written novel, exhilarating in its ideas and in the childrens' characters. Melpomene is quite exceptional but other children also are believable if exceptionally talented. Fab stuff.