After Earth becomes uninhabitable, twelve-year-old Henry Meadows and his family join humanity’s first colony on the hostile moon Perm, where they struggle to survive amid toxic air, alien life, and the mysterious absence of Henry’s mother, a scientist who arrived centuries earlier due to time dilation. The story explores themes of environmental responsibility, the ethics of colonization, and the tension between human ambition and the rights of other life forms, all through a blend of hard science fiction, family dynamics, and philosophical reflection.

Reader Review Summary

"Lyneham" is a captivating and thought-provoking science fiction novel that transports readers to the alien world of Perm - an ancient moon in a distant solar system that becomes humanity's new home after Earth is rendered uninhabitable. Westerboer weaves together two gripping narrative threads - one following 12-year-old Henry Meadows and his family arriving as new settlers on Perm, and the other detailing the earlier exploits of Henry's scientist mother Mildred who was part of the pioneering team trying to terraform the hostile moon for human habitation.

One of the book's biggest strengths is its mesmerizing world-building. Westerboer paints a richly detailed picture of Perm's strange, almost psychedelic environment - from the blindly groping flora and fauna, to the irregular day/night cycle caused by multiple suns, to the very real and ever-present dangers of the toxic atmosphere. His descriptions are both unsettling in their sheer alien-ness and wondrous in their vibrant imaginative flair. Perm feels like a fully realized and lived-in setting that comes vividly alive on the page.

The contrasting perspectives of mother and son make for an ingenious narrative framing device. Young Henry's wide-eyed, innocent viewpoint allows readers to experience the surreal strangeness of Perm alongside him, seeing this new world through fresh eyes brimming with curiosity and youthful resilience. Mildred's more jaded, scientific outlook provide crucial context about the epic challenges and moral dilemmas involved in remaking an entire world to suit human needs - raising poignant questions about the ethics of essentially colonizing an alien biosphere for our own survival.

As Henry interacts with the eccentric artificial intelligences and enigmatic human dynamics of the fledgling Perm colony, a sense of rising tension and mystery builds around his mother's unclear fate and Mildred's own burgeoning conflicts with her superior Noah over their differing philosophical stances. Both narrative threads steadily ratchet up the cerebral depth and dramatic stakes, morphing from an imaginative first-contact tale into a gripping existential thriller steeped in weighty ideas about environmentalism, transhumanism, evolution, and humanity's very place in the cosmos.

Westerboer proves himself a master world-builder and an insightful philosophical writer, deftly juggling grand concepts with strong character work and propulsive plotting across Lyneham's richly immersive 500 pages. While the climax admittedly grows a bit overly abstruse in its revelations, the ride to get there is a mind-bending journey well worth taking for any fan of ambitious, thought-provoking science fiction willing to be challenged by new perspectives on the future of human civilization. With its poetic prose and haunting alien sense of wonder, Lyneham cements Westerboer's status as one of the most imaginative and cerebrally engaging voices in contemporary German sci-fi.