Kid reporter! Mixed up in an uprising against a despot! Oh past future, you and your science-y vision of the newspaper world, with easily portable film cameras that relay back to the paper offices, and laser and UV plate engraving, to be cut out and hand pasted up. Mind you, two years after I worked hand paste up for the yearbook, I was using computers to lay out the school paper—while simultaneously taking an advanced graphics course that taught hand paste up. Sidebar: the word in the industry is that the current generation of journalism majors graduating are going to have to be re-taught, because they're learning what isn't used any more and the industry doesn't know what it needs yet. Awkward.
But the story. Allusions to Moby Dick, which I've now so read. The introduction to how Piper sees ethnicity in the future, incredibly mixed in unpredictable ways (there's a guy with a very Japanese name who is very Scottish looking, as a small example). Generally impressed by how well Piper can handle non-Terra kind of worlds in believable ways. Said planet goes through four day and night rotations in about one Terran year. Crazy weather stuff.