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whatharryread 's review for:
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
by Becky Chambers
This is a space opera that follows the story of the ‘Wayfarer’, a tunnelling ship with a diverse group made up of different species and personalities. Their job is to make wormholes allowing for space travel. Their next job is a chance to build a hyperspace tunnel to a distant planet, the home world of an unpredictable new species negotiating a deal to enter the Galactic Confederation. They'll earn enough money to live comfortably for years, but they must survive a trip through war-torn space.
This was a genuinely heart-warming story, and provided a fantastic change to traditional ‘heavy action’/complex science sci-fi. It doesn’t focus on big and explosive action scenes, rather choosing to adopt a more reflective, slow-burn character driven story. This isn’t perhaps something I would have usually gone for, but it was a incredibly pleasant surprise.
The focus of the book was on the build up and slow journey to this ‘small, angry planet’, rather than the drama when they get to their destination, and it gave opportunity to flesh out a wonderful cast of human and non-human characters, whom are memorable and endearing. The crew all get their ‘spotlight’ moment across the story, with the novel essentially being broken down into a number of ‘mini-episodes’ that focus on a member of the crew, even the more quiet ones. It leant itself to giving a range of characters you become incredibly fond of.
I have also struggled previously with overwhelming and heavy sci-fi, which focuses more on the science than the fiction. This was the opposite. Whilst it consists of a fully fleshed out and diverse universe, with a brilliant range of species, history and politics in the ‘Galactic Commons’, it wasn’t overwhelming, and the dollops of ‘science’ included were manageable.
Becky Chambers has written a book here that emits positivity. It was cozy, and the kind of read that just makes you feel good inside. Whilst being more in the gentle-side of the spectrum of sci-fi, its message speaks loud and beams of optimism. A wonderful story that gets 5 stars because it gave so much more than I expected.
This was a genuinely heart-warming story, and provided a fantastic change to traditional ‘heavy action’/complex science sci-fi. It doesn’t focus on big and explosive action scenes, rather choosing to adopt a more reflective, slow-burn character driven story. This isn’t perhaps something I would have usually gone for, but it was a incredibly pleasant surprise.
The focus of the book was on the build up and slow journey to this ‘small, angry planet’, rather than the drama when they get to their destination, and it gave opportunity to flesh out a wonderful cast of human and non-human characters, whom are memorable and endearing. The crew all get their ‘spotlight’ moment across the story, with the novel essentially being broken down into a number of ‘mini-episodes’ that focus on a member of the crew, even the more quiet ones. It leant itself to giving a range of characters you become incredibly fond of.
I have also struggled previously with overwhelming and heavy sci-fi, which focuses more on the science than the fiction. This was the opposite. Whilst it consists of a fully fleshed out and diverse universe, with a brilliant range of species, history and politics in the ‘Galactic Commons’, it wasn’t overwhelming, and the dollops of ‘science’ included were manageable.
Becky Chambers has written a book here that emits positivity. It was cozy, and the kind of read that just makes you feel good inside. Whilst being more in the gentle-side of the spectrum of sci-fi, its message speaks loud and beams of optimism. A wonderful story that gets 5 stars because it gave so much more than I expected.