In the far future, Earth has been conquered by an alien race known as the Shaa and most buildings are in an alien style. Some of Earth’s ancient landmarks are still intact despite centuries of neglect and earthquakes, but Earth has largely become an amusement park version of itself. Earth history isn’t even interesting to most humans since they grew up on other planets. We’re shown a future in which humans have largely forgotten humanity.

What little history there is is more like propaganda. It’s a bit depressing to realize that the future will most likely forget not only us, but also most famous humans throughout history. There’s a group called democracy club which reenacts city council debates like civil war reenactors, but democracy is largely a forgotten footnote of history.

The book starts slow with our protagonist traveling around Earth, taking in its history. The action doesn’t really start until about halfway through, but despite that, the book held my interest throughout, and it turns out many of the seemingly throw away details in the first half of the book become important later.

I liked that most of the aliens are truly alien. They aren’t just slightly different from humans. The action gets quite intense towards the end. Well worth your time.