The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Just finished Becky Chambers' The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and it was fun.

Everything that everyone says about how the book is short on plot is absolutely true. I think she threw in the excitement at the end as a way to start wrapping the book up. But that's fine.

This book is exhibit number one for the idea that a story doesn't have to be good at everything so long as it's really good at one or two things. In Chambers' case, she's really good at two things: world building and characterization. And the really cool thing is how her world-building and characterization support each other.

Her cast of characters centers on the multi-species ensemble that crews the space ship Wayfarer. Because the crew members come from different planets and species, you need the world-building in order to really understand the characters and lots of things that you learn about the characters, in turn, supports the world-building. So these two aspects of the story work as sort of a tag-team, each one jumping in to help the other as needed. It turns out really well.

So, not a plot driven work by any means, but certainly one of the sweetest and most endearing bits of scifi that I've read for a long time. At some point in the book I was grumbling about wanting something to happen but by the end of the book I was just disappointed that I wasn't going to be able to hang out with my new friends anymore. Bummer. I really got to like them.


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