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A review by wilt
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
Did not finish book. Stopped at 43%.
DNF at 40%
the experience of reading this book was like getting dropped into a filler episode in season 2 of a podcast. that is to say i felt lost, zero investment in the characters, and utter confusion about why i kept hearing such great things about this author.
im sure this cast of characters could have been interesting if only they were written by someone else. this is the most shallow writing ive encountered in a while and if this is supposed to be an example of good lgbt scifi i find that insulting. none of these characters have depth beyond quirky jokes and dialogue that never let us access their sincere selves. and when they do try to be sincere it just falls flat under the zero weight being applied to anything whatsoever. everything is either grossly over simplified and dropped on us point-blank with no effort encouraged from the reader to use their brain (ever heard of show, not tell? this author apparently hasnt) or overshadowed by another quirky string of dialouge and i simply couldnt take it anymore.
to call this a work of character driven fiction is also misleading. i like character driven fiction. i like it a lot. this is not that. this is like reading someone's worldbuilding document. disjointed, disconnected from the character's personal stories, and weirdly stated in monologues rather than introduced naturally within the story. because again, there is no story. the only part of this that could have promised to be a story was Jenks and Lovey's hunt for a flesh body. but i wasnt willing to put up with the equivalent of eating stale air for the rest of the book to see how that played out.
this is low-stakes frivolous drivel. this is the marvel movie of queer scifi.
the experience of reading this book was like getting dropped into a filler episode in season 2 of a podcast. that is to say i felt lost, zero investment in the characters, and utter confusion about why i kept hearing such great things about this author.
im sure this cast of characters could have been interesting if only they were written by someone else. this is the most shallow writing ive encountered in a while and if this is supposed to be an example of good lgbt scifi i find that insulting. none of these characters have depth beyond quirky jokes and dialogue that never let us access their sincere selves. and when they do try to be sincere it just falls flat under the zero weight being applied to anything whatsoever. everything is either grossly over simplified and dropped on us point-blank with no effort encouraged from the reader to use their brain (ever heard of show, not tell? this author apparently hasnt) or overshadowed by another quirky string of dialouge and i simply couldnt take it anymore.
to call this a work of character driven fiction is also misleading. i like character driven fiction. i like it a lot. this is not that. this is like reading someone's worldbuilding document. disjointed, disconnected from the character's personal stories, and weirdly stated in monologues rather than introduced naturally within the story. because again, there is no story. the only part of this that could have promised to be a story was Jenks and Lovey's hunt for a flesh body. but i wasnt willing to put up with the equivalent of eating stale air for the rest of the book to see how that played out.
this is low-stakes frivolous drivel. this is the marvel movie of queer scifi.