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4.19 AVERAGE
4.19 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It took a while for me to engage with this book. The constant switching of points of view was frustrating. But at some point it grew on me and I really enjoyed the earnestness of the world that Chambers built (even as I found it required some suspension of disbelief when it comes to human nature.) I was rooting for these characters.
Another fantastic character-focused storytelling. While I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the focus being on human species, it was as phenomenal as ever.
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This is a very hard book to rate. I listened to it on audiobook, and it was the same narrator of the first two and she continues to be brilliant, but the book somewhat suffers following upon the first. It's a somewhat different narrative style and is telling a somewhat broader story, and while I did ultimately enjoy it and find it effective, I so very much adored the first two books that I did find the departure somewhat disappointing when I might not have if I'd read this one first or read it as a stand-alone (which can absolutely be done).
I also, and this is a completely personal preference, generally don't much enjoy books with multiple POVs. Inevitably there are some I like more than others, which makes the book seem to drag when I'm with the characters I don't enjoy much. It also means that
The pacing here felt slower than the first books, and build more gradual and abstract. As is often the case with multi-POV books, it was a little unclear what the author was ultimately building towards until the end, which can make the read a bit frustrating. But I did think it came together quite beautifully, the writing was engaging and charming, and there were a number of moments that brought me to tears. I did ultimately enjoy this one, and I do think it's a great book, I just didn't fall in love with it in quite the same way as I did the first two.
I also, and this is a completely personal preference, generally don't much enjoy books with multiple POVs. Inevitably there are some I like more than others, which makes the book seem to drag when I'm with the characters I don't enjoy much. It also means that
Spoiler
when the author kills off one of my favorite POV characters in a quite sudden and pointless way (that does serve the greater narrative at least) I'm quite angry and refuse to read the book for so long that I almost didn't finish it before it was due back at the library, but I digress.The pacing here felt slower than the first books, and build more gradual and abstract. As is often the case with multi-POV books, it was a little unclear what the author was ultimately building towards until the end, which can make the read a bit frustrating. But I did think it came together quite beautifully, the writing was engaging and charming, and there were a number of moments that brought me to tears. I did ultimately enjoy this one, and I do think it's a great book, I just didn't fall in love with it in quite the same way as I did the first two.
I really liked this; it is a worthy companion book to the other two in The Wayfarer’s series. It is warm, wise, and often funny. As with The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, it is heavily character-driven: the fun of the book is in watching how its people change. Becky Chambers writes vivid dialogue, especially for her bewildered teenagers. Those sections were hilarious and heart-wrenching. Other sections, like Isabel’s, occasionally felt a little preachy—but those moments are rare. Read this book if you like science fiction, cultural anthropology, space stuff, or stories about good-hearted people trying to make meaning of their lives. Also, read it if you get impatient with unambiguously perfect happy endings.
I have yet to read a Becky Chambers book that didn't make me sob.
Record of a Spaceborn Few is about the Exodans, a massive fleet of ships where humans who escaped a dying and dead earth have lived for generations. The Exodans fled an earth devastated by wars and climate catastrophes and were insistent that they would not repeat the mistakes of their ancestors. Thus they built a society that completely eschewed violence and commerce. Everyone was given the same shelter, everyone was given food, everyone would provide what they could and receive what they needed.
As a miserable queer leftist living through climate catastrophes, I love the idea that our future is to be gay space communists (they haven't gotten around to the luxury and fully-automated bits). There were two big boring ways I could see some spec-fic writers taking this idea: either they could present it as a perfect utopia that needs protection from outside threats, or as something that's secretly terrible in unexpected ways.
Instead Becky Chambers approached this with the kind of compassionate nuance I've come to expect from her, and the result is wonderful.
The core principles of the Exodans are beautiful. They're humanistic, and hopeful, and just. They're also the principles of people, complicated people living in ancient spaceships that can fail catastrophically or just get really boring. People who only barter and have no use for currency... until they need the outside help of technologically superior aliens, and notice all the cool stuff they would be able to afford if only they had some shiny credits.
Record of a Spaceborn Few follows several different characters with independent but interlinked story-lines, and each views the fleet in a different way: an archivist walking an alien scholar through the Exodan way of life, a caretaker who prepares dead Exodans for their incredibly moving funeral customs, a teenager who is sick of Exodan life and wants to seek greener pastures planet-side, a blue collar worker on a rough planet who longs to reconnect with his distant Exodan roots, and a tired mom trying to raise kids in a fleet that is already so different from the one she grew up in.
What really strikes me about these viewpoints is how real they feel. So much of what these characters experience, in this far flung alien sci-fi future, strike extremely close to home. I don't live on a spaceship, but I have watched disasters in my country unfold on the news, knowing life would never be the same again. I have seen foreigners look at my country and culture with a mixture of pity and curiosity and not known how to feel about that. I have looked at other countries in the same way. I've had so, so many friends leave this place searching for greener pastures, while I've remained, not even totally sure why. And while I don't live in a gay communist spaceship, I do understand being told to love a place and not knowing if I really do.
Becky Chambers captures all of these facets in such an honest and authentic way that it feels more like she's documenting it than inventing it. She tells a story about community, cultural relativism, life and death, migration, and progress. She creates a society that a lot of people on earth would give anything to live in, but by treating it with such nuance, she makes it feel hopeful and possible in a way that no rose-colored depiction would have.
This book isn't as exciting as the first two in the series, and the characters aren't as colorful. A lot of it is slice-of-life (except for when it isn't), and it did drag a bit in the middle. It may not satisfy the same itch of the first two, in my opinion, equally wonderful books. But in the quiet exploration of this unique setting, and in the slowly mounting tension of the underlying plot, Becky Chambers hits at some profound truths and achingly real emotions. This book made me long for the stars, and reminded me to love the ground.
Record of a Spaceborn Few is about the Exodans, a massive fleet of ships where humans who escaped a dying and dead earth have lived for generations. The Exodans fled an earth devastated by wars and climate catastrophes and were insistent that they would not repeat the mistakes of their ancestors. Thus they built a society that completely eschewed violence and commerce. Everyone was given the same shelter, everyone was given food, everyone would provide what they could and receive what they needed.
As a miserable queer leftist living through climate catastrophes, I love the idea that our future is to be gay space communists (they haven't gotten around to the luxury and fully-automated bits). There were two big boring ways I could see some spec-fic writers taking this idea: either they could present it as a perfect utopia that needs protection from outside threats, or as something that's secretly terrible in unexpected ways.
Instead Becky Chambers approached this with the kind of compassionate nuance I've come to expect from her, and the result is wonderful.
The core principles of the Exodans are beautiful. They're humanistic, and hopeful, and just. They're also the principles of people, complicated people living in ancient spaceships that can fail catastrophically or just get really boring. People who only barter and have no use for currency... until they need the outside help of technologically superior aliens, and notice all the cool stuff they would be able to afford if only they had some shiny credits.
Record of a Spaceborn Few follows several different characters with independent but interlinked story-lines, and each views the fleet in a different way: an archivist walking an alien scholar through the Exodan way of life, a caretaker who prepares dead Exodans for their incredibly moving funeral customs, a teenager who is sick of Exodan life and wants to seek greener pastures planet-side, a blue collar worker on a rough planet who longs to reconnect with his distant Exodan roots, and a tired mom trying to raise kids in a fleet that is already so different from the one she grew up in.
What really strikes me about these viewpoints is how real they feel. So much of what these characters experience, in this far flung alien sci-fi future, strike extremely close to home. I don't live on a spaceship, but I have watched disasters in my country unfold on the news, knowing life would never be the same again. I have seen foreigners look at my country and culture with a mixture of pity and curiosity and not known how to feel about that. I have looked at other countries in the same way. I've had so, so many friends leave this place searching for greener pastures, while I've remained, not even totally sure why. And while I don't live in a gay communist spaceship, I do understand being told to love a place and not knowing if I really do.
Becky Chambers captures all of these facets in such an honest and authentic way that it feels more like she's documenting it than inventing it. She tells a story about community, cultural relativism, life and death, migration, and progress. She creates a society that a lot of people on earth would give anything to live in, but by treating it with such nuance, she makes it feel hopeful and possible in a way that no rose-colored depiction would have.
This book isn't as exciting as the first two in the series, and the characters aren't as colorful. A lot of it is slice-of-life (except for when it isn't), and it did drag a bit in the middle. It may not satisfy the same itch of the first two, in my opinion, equally wonderful books. But in the quiet exploration of this unique setting, and in the slowly mounting tension of the underlying plot, Becky Chambers hits at some profound truths and achingly real emotions. This book made me long for the stars, and reminded me to love the ground.
we love an optimistic space opera set in a beautiful communal fleet featuring an endearing cast of seemingly disparate characters and a married pair of 70 year old lesbians. honestly a diasporic story.