Earth has been rendered uninhabitable, but humanity survives in a fleet of ships traveling from place to place extracted all they can before moving on. Life shipboard is managed through a strict caste system. One can easily journey down, but it is rare for one to rise from below. At the bottom are those ‘chained,’ that is physically chained to the ship and working in groups. Their property is small and theirs is a life of servitude. Our story begins focused on an unnamed boy who has been raised chained, but he shows a talent for drawing that leads to him being chosen to ascend.

Guards monitor the chained, higher classes where a blue anklet that shows their status but can also be an instrument of control. The boy is brought to the university where he is educated by a professor who is the daughter of a chained. She works to explore the culture of the ships, particularly focused on the games of children.

The boy struggles to adapt to a changed life and the new expectations, some wishing him to succeed for the benefit of all, others focused on his failure due to being out of his place. But the boy was raised under the tutelage of ‘the prophet’ a storytelling chained who speaks of a greater humanity.

There is much to learn of our own society from this compelling novella. How do we move being our self focused lives to consider the needs of the many? How do we challenge the privilege and complacency of those with power to make a more equitable society? The Practice the Horizon, and the Chain provides a narrative frame to consider our societal systems and how cooperation promises a better future.

Within The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain Samatar is able to craft a story heavy with themes and ideas in a small package. I would describe this book as one about ideas that uses this fictional science fiction world to explore ideas around oppression and how people survive in systems which want to control and hurt them. Samatar is able to explore these ideas in a way which left me thinking about it for days after I finished this story. She is also able to make a story which is ultimately hopeful about us being able to survive and remain connected to each other. From reading this I am incredibly excited to read more of Samatar’s writing. I received an ARC of this book from Tor, All opinions are my own.

Celebrated author Sofia Samatar presents a mystical, revolutionary space adventure for the exhausted dreamer in this brilliant science fiction novella tackling the carceral state and violence embedded in the ivory tower while embodying the legacy of Ursula K. Le Guin.

"Can the University be a place of both training and transformation?"

The boy was raised as one of the Chained, condemned to toil in the bowels of a mining ship out amongst the stars.

His whole world changes―literally―when he is yanked "upstairs" to meet the woman he will come to call “professor.” The boy is no longer one of the Chained, she tells him, and he has been gifted an opportunity to be educated at the ship’s university alongside the elite.

The woman has spent her career striving for acceptance and validation from her colleagues in the hopes of reaching a brighter future, only to fall short at every turn.

Together, the boy and the woman will learn from each other to grasp the design of the chains designed to fetter them both, and are the key to breaking free. They will embark on a transformation―and redesign the entire world.

I think this was a very promising book by a very promising author. I think the fact this was a novella helped it's cause, as while it told a really good story, it was also a little weird and out there. I think fans of the scifi genre will find plenty to love here as I have:)

On a mining ship in deep space, the Chained are slave laborers who toil away in the Hold to keep the ship running, while the elite class Upstairs have comfortable lives in a domed city. A character referred to in the story only “the woman” or “the professor” resurrects a scholarship program for those in the Hold to be brought upstairs for an education in the University. But the recipient, referred to only as “the boy,” finds Upstairs and a life unchained to be foreign and difficult to understand,

The future created in this novella is a bleak one, and I don’t care for dystopias that are horribly bleak, though this one ends with hope. Even Upstairs, society is divided into two distinct castes, and the people in the middle caste are in many ways living in chains just as much as those in the Hold (though the ankleted – the middle caste - are still somewhat treated as human, where the chained are completely dehumanized.)

Overall it was quite good, but like I said, quite bleak for most of it, and there were some things I didn’t understand towards the end. 3.5 stars, rounded up.

This didn't end up reading like I anticipated it would. I love generation ships, I love the way the social factions develop after years and years in space--it's often such a dystopian idea played out in a really interesting sort of "locked spaceship" setting. I go feral for anything like that. This novella, though, I found....a bit hard to get in to. I found the world we were dropped into a bit hard to follow, and I think with the ability to flesh out in more pages, this could have been even cooler. I liked the idea of the story a lot, which compelled me to keep reading. I would be really interested in more from this world, as I feel like this could be really fascinating with more room to expand on ideas and the ship.

I love Sofia Samatar's writing and this novella is no exception! Thoughtful, insightful, just really expertly done. Would really love to reread this one to see what more I can glean from it on a second read.

This book would probably have gotten one star if the writing hadn't been so beautiful.

This novella is about a generation ship and the social stratification that has come to pass with the centuries the ship has been operational. Someone from the lowest strata (these people don't even get clothes, they eat barely edible slop, and are permanently chained) is given an opportunity through a scholarship to mingle with and learn from the more privileged class. This program is meant to bring "new blood" into this part of the society within the ship. But even the privileged are constantly monitored and run the risk of being cast down into the mud if they transgress. It was an unpleasant read.

Our lower deck hero has a mystic quality about him. In his previous situation, spirituality was a vital part of how people stayed sane and productive ( which is what was important to their overseers). He realizes that he has a quest to undertake. His sponsor, who doesn't understand him but wants to help (to a certain extent) ends up getting in quite a bit of trouble.

This is very much a dystopia book with a look into just how bad things could get. I didn't enjoy the book's world at all.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Tor Publishing Group- Todotcom for an advance copy for this novel that looks at the life in a dark future where the lessons of the past are still ignored, and where people have only themselves and not technology to right what is wrong with them.

Science fiction is always thought as a genre that looks at the future, but the ideas that make up that future are rooted in the past. Alien encounters mirror the history of many encounters of two different groups on earth, say European and Indigenous, with many of the same problems. Communication, culture, and how people can be exploited. Most military science fiction started with writers of wars refighting the conflicts they had been a part of, or trying to avoid those same conflicts. The addition of new voices, women, and people who have generally been ignored and underserved by this genre and its many gatekeepers has added many new themes and ideas and ways of telling stories. And how the actions of the past still carry generational pain. The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar is a space opera story, a story of academia, a story of finding oneself, and a story of people, trying to make whole their lives and their souls.

A boy has spent his entire short life deep in the bowels of the Hold, knowing little but darkness the soapy water he is served, security people with truncheons, and the chain that is always around his ankle. And work. The boy though has a gift both for thinking and for art, and is noticed by others who decide to "help" and move the boy upstairs. And remove his chain. The boy is sick from losing his chain, and fear in that he has been conscripted to work for the security team that watches over them, the blue legs. What he does not know is that he is also sick from losing his chain. The boy meets a person he knows only as the professor, who tells him that he has been honoured to be educated among the elite of this space ship, a generational kind of ship that travels to asteroids and mines them, with those below doing the work. The professor understands what the boy is going through, being descended from someone who was also freed once. Together the boy and the professor try to help each other, in a society that does not value anything.

A small book that with a large emotional impact. This book is not only written wonderfully but looks at more themes, and has more difficult ideas than any fifteen book series. And characters that one grows to not only root and care for, but understand in ways that is rare in fiction. The world is well described, the use of old nautical terms mixed with science terms. The way the characters act, from being lost like the boy, to the professor's colleagues who have no idea what the boy is feeling, pontificating away. Enslavement, hierarchies, corporate disinterest, soul death. There really is a lot going on here. And I can't stress the writing enough. One never learns the boy's nor the professor names. One doesn't really have to. In another story that might make the reader feel removed from what is going on. Here the impact of what the characters are dealing with hits stronger, because we don't even have names to say to try and make them feel better in our minds.

There have been many great books coming recently with different voices and ways of looking at the world. Another golden age in writing as I have never been so interested in science fiction since I was a kid. I really enjoyed this, and can't wait to read more works by Sofia Samatar.

An interesting story about a civilization contained on a mining ship in space. The story highlights the inequities between those who live and work in the hold, "the chained", and those living above. I feel that I must have missed something deeper in this story because there were so many obvious parallels with enslaved people throughout history. I continued reading this because of how beautifully it was written.

To be honest I don't even know where to start with reviewing this novella.

To say that it's breathtaking is insufficient. I can say that it should be on every single award ballot for this year, but that only tells you how much I admired it.

I could try and explain how it explores ideas of slavery, and the experience of the enslaved; ideas of control, and social hierarchy; about human resilience and human evil. Draw connections with Ursula K Le Guin's "The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas," and probably a slew of stories that connect to the Atlantic slave trade and which I haven't read (mostly because I'm Australian).

There are odes to be written to the lyricism of Samatar's prose, but I don't myself have the words to express that. Entire creative writing classes would benefit from reading this, and sitting with it, and gently prying at why it works the way it does.

I could give you an outline? There's a fleet of space ships, and they're mining asteroids, and mining is dreadful work so you know who you get to do the dreadful work? People that you don't call enslaved but who are indeed enslaved. There's an entire hierarchy around who's doing the mining in the hold, and who's a guard and who's not a guard, and the people at the top have convinced themselves there's not REALLY a hierarchy it's just the way things need to be. Sometimes someone from the Hold is brought out of the Hold, and then has to learn how to be outside of the Hold... and then someone starts to see through the system, and maybe has a way to change things.

The outline doesn't convey how powerful the story is.

I should add: the main characters are never named.

Just... everyone should read this. It's not long, so there's no excuse! But it will stay in your head, and it will punch you in the guts. In the good way.

The formatting of the kindle version was broken. I couldn’t read it. Leaving five stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for the ARC.

This is a lyrical, beautifully written scifi/dark academia novella. There is so much happening in these short number of pages and I felt overwhelmed (in a good way) when I closed this book after finishing. An excellent story on the nature of humankind and overthrowing oppression. I would definitely read more by this author.

** As a note added here just for Netgalley users- the Kindle book has major formatting errors and there are combos of 5+ words that have no spaces in between and look like one giant word. If you download the EPUB/PDF book it does not have these formatting issues- hope this will help others.

I adore the premise of this one which plays with at a critique of dark academia. This world felt brutal and unflinching. However I failed to get immersed into the story. (As another reviewer mentioned, the formatting on this eARC is brutal which may have affected my ability to get lost in the story.

I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.

However I really want to love this one so I may try it again if I can get a hold of a more readable format.

The boy has spent his entire life down in the Hold, as one of the Chained. The woman is a professor at the ship's university and has recently gotten a new scholarship program approved. She picks the boy and he is brought upstairs to receive an education.

This book is gorgeously written. Confusing at times, but lyrical without being overwritten. I think the choice to make this a novella was the correct one, as it allowed Samatar to focus entirely on the boy and the woman through the entire narrative.

My main critique is that my ARC copy had some major formatting issues. On nearly every page, many words were stuck together without spacing making it difficult to read the book. At first I thought it was just part of the boy's side of the narrative, but it continued throughout the entire book and did not seem to have a reason for being there. I know this is not the author's fault, but it greatly impacted my reading experience.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!