A Closed and Common Orbit

4.5 stars I'm not usually a big sci-fi fan, but these books are everything! I can't wait for the third book to come out.

This series couldn't make me happier. It's a book equivalent of a warm bath and a hot cup of tea. I love every character and every direction the story goes. Book 3 can't come out soon enough!

What a lovely and heartfelt, book. While I enjoyed her first book, this one pulled me into the lives of the characters and their arcs more than “Long Way to Small Angry Planet.” Possibly because she focused on fewer characters than in the first book.

Close and Common Orbit is really a story of people discovering who they are, the importance of friendship and bonds, and the need we all have for companionship and to feel at home. I can't recommend it enough- we don't usually think of sci-fi as touching or moving, but this was both.

I'm in two minds about this book. On the one hand, it's a better, more coherent story than [b:The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet 25201920 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1) Becky Chambers https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1438590529l/25201920.SY75.jpg 42270825]; it becomes quite gripping and interesting; and it has a happy ending. On the other hand, it has fewer significant characters, and much of the story is a tale of discomfort and suffering.On picking it up again after a gap of almost 4 years, I thought of what I was letting myself in for, and wondered whether I really wanted to reread this thing. Tales of discomfort and suffering are not what I go looking for. In fact, I've reduced it from 4 stars to 3, because I shouldn't be in doubt about whether I want to reread a 4-star book.I persevered and reread the whole thing, and I thought it was good in its way. I complained mildly about the cuteness of the characters in [b:The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet 25201920 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1) Becky Chambers https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1438590529l/25201920.SY75.jpg 42270825]; here the only similarly cute character is Owl. If I try to be objective, I think this is the better book of the two; but reviews and ratings aren't objective and can't be objective, they're about your personal reactions to the subject. And my personal reaction is that I'm somewhat reluctant to reread this book, because I have to wade through plenty of unhappiness before reaching (eventually) the happy ending.Even the happy ending is somewhat qualified. Pepper in particular still has problems that she's never going to lose, as a result of her deprived childhood. Sidra has found something that suits her in the short term; she may become bored with it later. And she's still under sentence of death if her secret leaks out, although all the characters seem to have stopped worrying about that by the end of the story.Most sf authors suffer from anthropomorphism to some extent: non-human characters tend to function pretty much like humans, because that makes them easy to understand and sympathize with, and they can then function better in the story. Most sf aliens, including Becky Chambers aliens, function pretty much like humans would if they were born with different bodies and brought up in a different society. They have humanlike minds.I've been reading sf for a long time, so at least I'm accustomed to that. What bothers me here is that the intelligent machines (AIs) have humanlike minds too: they feel humanlike emotions, and can appreciate and enjoy art and literature.These are AIs designed to run a spaceship. Humanlike emotions and artistic appreciation aren't merely useless for this purpose, they're counter-productive: they distract the AI from its proper functions and are likely to degrade its performance. They wouldn't be designed in deliberately.You could argue that humanlike emotions and artistic appreciation come with intelligence and can't be avoided if you want intelligence. This theory is fairly common in sf, it can't be proved or disproved at present, but it irritates me when authors just assume it to be so without even trying to make it seem plausible. Why should intelligence require these extra features? The only argument seems to be that, well, we're intelligent and we have these features. By the same argument, everything possessing intelligence should also have ten fingers, ten toes, an appendix, and so on.I also have a specific minor niggle about the story. The young Jane suffers a broken leg, and the story glosses over how she recovers from that unaided. I suspect that in real life it would take longer and never fully recover, after being inexpertly set. I think the author should have chosen a somewhat less serious injury. But I'm not a doctor, I have no relevant expertise.

yes friends, you read that correctly, i gave this book 5 stars. i don't give many books 5 stars.

i want to think more on it before i write a lot more, but i just finished it and am grinning like an idiot.

After reading [b:The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet 22733729 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1) Becky Chambers https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1405532474s/22733729.jpg 42270825], I wanted more set in this universe, and I was glad there was more. I preferred the characters and space adventure in the first book a little more, but this book was very interesting as well.

A really enjoyable read, but just not on the same level of [b:The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet 25786523 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1) Becky Chambers https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1435140741s/25786523.jpg 42270825] for me. I think in time I will definitely appreciate it additional information in the wider Wayfarers universe. Great writing, and really interesting ideas by Chambers once again.

after sitting with it for (quite) a while and finishing the rest of the series i???m upping the rating for this one! 4 stars thank u becky chambers

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3-3.5

???I know that if I am a person, I have no purpose by base, but I'm starving for one.???

This book wasn't bad, not bad at all. I think the part where I struggled a bit was also the part of me that had gotten attached to the crew of the Wayfarer and wasn't quite ready to let them go (and the additional part where I hadn't realised this wasn't actually a direct continuation from #1 until I started the book). I would've loved to see them in a cameo in this story, to make me feel a little less homesick.

I did really enjoy the philosophy of this story. What constitutes a person? How does an intelligent AI differ from “actual” people? Aren't we all just lines of codes, programmed differently? And it was really cool to have one of the protagonists actually be that AI and show the internal struggles that come with that.

All my love to Owl and Blue and Tak.

While I missed the crew of the Wayfarer, I think I liked this book even better than the first. Slightly more serious it gave me a lot to ponder about existence while giving me a new take on friendship. So enjoyable.

I didn't quite love this book as much as the first one in the series. It has interesting characters and I appreciate the themes of acceptance that the author illustrates in her stories.

It was strange reading a sequel that had very little to do (character wise) with the first book. But after the initial jarring expectation, the book was every bit as good as the first. It was a sweet tale about beings figuring out who they were, and who they wanted to be.

Holy shit this one got to me. There are very few books that can bring you to tears, but this is one of them. It does the telling-two-stories-in-alternating-chapters thing, which has become annoyingly popular. As usual, one of the stories is much stronger than the other, but both stories and enough to stand up on there own. Like A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Chambers focuses on writing characters rather than story. The plot is paper thin, but you keep turning the page regardless because you want to know what happens to these characters.

Little Jane-that-was
adopted by an AI
raising a new one.

Score 3.5

I think I might just like this more than “the long way to a small angry planet”. Totally different style; whilst I sometimes found the switches between viewpoints frustrating, that was simply because I wanted to stay in that viewpoint for longer.

Executive Summary: While not as fun/light as the first book, by the end I enjoyed this one nearly as much.Full ReviewI only came across Ms. Chambers and her book [b:The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet 22733729 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1) Becky Chambers https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1405532474s/22733729.jpg 42270825] about a month ago, but I thoroughly enjoyed that book. I was excited to learn that a sequel was due out so soon.Except, this isn't so much a sequel as it is another story told in the same setting with mostly new characters. This follows the events of the first book, but could nearly be read stand alone apart from references back to it.The story is split in two alternating stories. The first story is about an artificial intelligence, Lovelace, that was created to serve about a ship, but now finds herself in a human analogue. The other story is about the past of Pepper, the technician whom we met as a minor character in the original book.Pepper did not have an easy childhood. Lovelace is not having an easy time of her new situation. That made this book a bit harder to read than the first. I enjoyed the first part, but the fun of the first book was missing. I found Lovelace's parts slow at the start as well.As the book went on though, I was just as caught up in it as I was in Long Way. This was a very different book, but it was still an interesting story to be told. The main theme of the book, if I had to pick one is what does it mean to be alive/sentient? What things make us all the same? How can we come to understand and accept the differences of others?Some might think that is preachy. I know I read criticism of the first book with that complaint. For me though, it's what sci-fi has done for years. Evaluate big ideas in a futuristic and imagined future. You can have escapism and thought provoking story telling at the same time.Overall, I found this book very heartwarming, though a bit of a tough read at times. I hope we get another Wayfarers book at some point in the future. I'd love to revisit the characters in either this book or the first one. I'd be just as happy to read another story set in the same series with entirely different characters though. Ms. Chambers has shown a talent for writing the kind of sci-fi I enjoy, and I will be interested in picking up her next book, no matter what that is.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com

I think the best way to describe this book is it's about an artificial intelligence having an existential crisis. It's about much more than that too. It's about learning how to be a person and learning how to be tolerant of other species. But it's mostly about an artificial intelligence having an existential crisis. And let's be real here. If you were an AI thrown into a body and told to act like a human you would have some problems too.

I should really start at the beginning. A Closed And Common Orbit is the sort of sequel to The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet. I say sort of because though you don't have to read Small, Angry Planet it does set up the universe these books are set in and Orbit does mention some of the things that happened in Planet so it may be helpful to read the first book before going into this.

I think my favourite thing about this whole series is the universe it's set in. The whole point of these whole books is the characters learning to be tolerant of other species (something we desperately need nowadays). But it's also interesting because Humans aren't the dominant species in this universe. Which means they don't have some of the privileges others may have. They are more like the Bolians of this universe. Or the Ferengi. Something like that.

But it's also really clever how Becky Chambers has set up extremely different species, you don't have any alien of the week here where the only difference from human is a strangely shaped forehead. Everything is different about each species. From their physiology to politics to language and even to the way they rear children. It's nice having a sci-fi book with so much diversity in it.