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A review by felix
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
adventurous
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
I really enjoyed this book! It had pretty much everything I enjoy: different alien species, artificial intelligence ethics, WLW in space... I enjoyed the way the author took the reader through different characters' backgrounds and cultures, and I thought the characters were stunningly well-developed. I'm fully in awe of how each character had a distinct presence and style, and no one really felt flat.
Not five stars because I thought the pacing was a little off-- it was difficult for me to tell how much time had passed in between visiting each planet-- and I also feel like the author fell into a few different traps that sci-fi featuring alien species often falls into: each species was presented almost as a monolith, with little consideration to the different cultures within the species, and I wished the author had pushed some of the alien species a little further away from the humanoid norm. I was also uncomfortable with the way she presented the Aeluons as almost universally attractive to humans without a discussion of how that could lead to (or be a result of) fetishization-- there's a conversation to be had there, but I didn't feel like this book really addressed it.
All told, though, I really enjoyed this book, and I will almost definitely be rereading it!
Not five stars because I thought the pacing was a little off-- it was difficult for me to tell how much time had passed in between visiting each planet-- and I also feel like the author fell into a few different traps that sci-fi featuring alien species often falls into: each species was presented almost as a monolith, with little consideration to the different cultures within the species, and I wished the author had pushed some of the alien species a little further away from the humanoid norm. I was also uncomfortable with the way she presented the Aeluons as almost universally attractive to humans without a discussion of how that could lead to (or be a result of) fetishization-- there's a conversation to be had there, but I didn't feel like this book really addressed it.
All told, though, I really enjoyed this book, and I will almost definitely be rereading it!