Raft

Stephen Baxter's debut novel falls squarely into the diminishing sub-genre of 'hard s-f'. The book is primarily driven by its ideas. What would a universe in which gravity is a billion times stronger than what it is in our universe look like? Lets give it a breathable atmosphere and strand some humans there, and voila! We have the premise behind Raft.

Its pretty cleverly done. And while one can appreciate the cleverness of the setting, the enjoyment of a book rises and falls primarily on its story, characters and language. The story is a straightforward 'clever but ignorant young boy from a farm (or mine in this case) has adventures that take him across the world (nebula in this case) and saves humanity', all in a clever setting of course. The characters are fairly stock-in-trade and the prose workman-like. Given the unremarkableness of these elements, its a good thing the book itself is fairly short and does not outstay its welcome.