Skinship by James Reich is a short science fiction novel with a fresh take on the multi-generational space ship trope.

The situation is familiar: a huge ship is leaving a dying Earth, containing the last remaining humans who will breed for many generations in deep space, to enable their descendants to reach a safe planet greatly distant from Earth.

James Reich delivers a unique vision however, both of the "Skinship" itself and of the conflicts between the inhabitants of the ark. At such vast distances over space and time, some of the inhabitants are barely recognizable as human anymore, both in terms of their appearance and motivations.

Given the dark tone of the world building and characterizations, I genuinely could not guess if the mission would be successfully or not, right up to the end. The characters were believable, grounded, and at times desperate. You want them to survive! James is a talented writer, who packs a lot into a short book of less than two hundred pages. If he ever decides to write a sequel, I would love to spend more time with these characters and this world.

Skinship is strongly recommended for lovers of intelligent science fiction, I look forward to reading more of his work soon.