Roy Complain escapes from the village that is his home with a renagade priest to discover the mystery of their world: the ship. This is a story of a generation ship gone horribly wrong. The story plays out slowly, too slowly, I felt. I got slightly frustrated at the slow pace of the early parts of the book, with things only really coming together enough to make sense in the last quarter or so. And the strange combination of a primitive society living in the remnants of a technological marvel never quite gelled for me. But there was lots to enjoy in the book: Aldiss is an excellent writer and the writing is very pleasant to read.
