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ginger_cricket 's review for:
Record of a Spaceborn Few
by Becky Chambers
Another thoughtful installment in the Wayfarer universe, this time focusing on the human Fleet.
Like the second book, this one felt very quiet. It reads like a series of profiles rather than a novel with a thrilling plotline. I can understand reviewers who found it dull or otherwise difficult to engage with, but again I enjoyed Chamber’s way of taking an anthropological approach to a fictional futuristic world. This book in particular feels more like a literary novel than a science fiction novel.
I personally found all the perspectives relatable. The teenager desperately struggling to break out of their known world, which is feeling like an outgrown and embarrassing sweater. The single young woman succeeding in her career but feeling vaguely unsatisfied. The young man yearning for a community after feeling untethered for most of his life. The middle-aged mother balancing her career, marriage, children, and parents. The older woman who still has a lot of life within her, and who hosts the alien guest who provides yet another perspective on human life. As with the previous books, the characters feel authentic and whole to the point where I often forget they are fictional.
Chambers writes a human world that is familiar and different. The Fleet seemed a smidge too utopian to be believable, but nonetheless it served as a useful example of the types of structural and social needs of a human community on a generational ship.
Like the second book, this one felt very quiet. It reads like a series of profiles rather than a novel with a thrilling plotline. I can understand reviewers who found it dull or otherwise difficult to engage with, but again I enjoyed Chamber’s way of taking an anthropological approach to a fictional futuristic world. This book in particular feels more like a literary novel than a science fiction novel.
I personally found all the perspectives relatable. The teenager desperately struggling to break out of their known world, which is feeling like an outgrown and embarrassing sweater. The single young woman succeeding in her career but feeling vaguely unsatisfied. The young man yearning for a community after feeling untethered for most of his life. The middle-aged mother balancing her career, marriage, children, and parents. The older woman who still has a lot of life within her, and who hosts the alien guest who provides yet another perspective on human life. As with the previous books, the characters feel authentic and whole to the point where I often forget they are fictional.
Chambers writes a human world that is familiar and different. The Fleet seemed a smidge too utopian to be believable, but nonetheless it served as a useful example of the types of structural and social needs of a human community on a generational ship.