The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

The Wayfarer is a worm-hole building spaceship. That's right, they build those things. And there's a crew. So next time you are driving past a road building team with stop/go guy, leaning on shovel guy, digger driver guy, roller driver guy, think your way into the future about traveling through a worm hole to a distant planet. Somebody made that super fast interplanetary motorway called a worm hole.

The Wayfarer crew has a captain, a pilot, a navigator, a repair/techie, a computer guy, an office manager, a doctor/cook, a fuel guy, and a sentient AI that controls the ship. Three of them are human, the others are aliens of different species, and they have different levels of affection or antipathy to each other. It's a small operation doing mainly 'local roads', until a major job appears. Along the way various crises occur, each impacting one or other of the characters and causing shifts in their relationships.

The book is strong on character development and world building but Chambers' prose doesn't get the most from those strengths. I'd just come from reading Christopher Ruocchio whose prose is extraordinary, so Chambers had a challenge from the start. However, the book was short listed for the Arthur C Clarke award, so maybe I'm being a bit tough on her.

The bulk of the story is about 'the long way' but towards the end of the book we find out where this worm hole is taking them. And that's where everything hits the fan.