Jane Eyre IN SPACE? I dunno, but I'm not completely bowled over by it. The setup of a world being destroyed, and the few survivors doing everything to, as far as possible, preserve their culture and way of life while having to become refugees among strangers, is both timely (Lord was inspired by the 2004 tsunami, but hey, look at the world...) and effective, and the worldbuilding is very nicely done, with hints dropped bit by bit rather than in big infodumps, making the reader realise that you already know stuff when it shows up.

Unfortunately the love story itself (which reads as partly classic romance, partly repurposed Spock/Uhura fanfic, not that there's anything wrong with either) overwhelms the plot, which becomes far too episodic and oh-we're-over-here-now for my taste, dragging the story out rather than advancing it.

2.5/5.