The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Absolutely delightful

This is one of those stories that make the world a happier place. Although there is some conflict in the book, it is not the focus. The characters are relatable and the world building is excellent. If you're looking for an easy, enjoyable read, this is it.

I don't know what I was expecting, but to fall in love with a series like this wasn't one of them. I'm going to devour this series and savor every damn bite.

1/3 the way through, and quite enjoying it. Much less plot- and action-oriented (read: obsessed) than sci-fi often seems to be. Also no overwhelming info-dump at the start to orient you to the future world; it nicely was slowly revealed/unveiled/rolled out on a bit of a need-to-know basis. Really focuses on the characters and their wants/needs/motivations, along with character aspects, foibles, and quirks. It means that the narrative has yet to put one as the reader in that awkward position where characters act outside of or against character in service to the plot. It's the reverse (again, so far).

absolutely loved this book. the characters were written so well, and the world was so damn interesting. i didn't mind at all that it had kind of that sitcom episode-of-the-week feel between the chapters, because it meant we got to know the characters better. this is series i borrowed from the library, but now i'll be happy to buy the books knowing how good they are. 

In some ways this gives me Star Trek TNG vibes with a kiss of Voyager. If that makes no sense, for me I thought the species and culture exploration super cool, impressive and frankly brilliant. I'm not sure what it is about this book that leaves me confused about how I feel about it - like what are the gaps for me to prevent it from being 5-stars? - especially ‘cause I went straight to the sequel. Perhaps I was missing an enthralling plot? Idk, 3- or 4-stars for me.

This is a really fun, interesting book. It is definitely a character driven sci-fi drama but with a very well fleshed out universe full of diverse inhabitants. The basic plot is simple enough, Rosemary joins a drilling ship with a diverse crew of many races and genders. The ship is commissioned to create a intergalactic superhighway of sorts, between known space and a new mysterious alien race. Obviously no spoilers. The level of detail in the interactions with our diverse range of alien lifeforms, genders, and cast make this an exciting read. The fact that some of the characters don't identify in any specific gender, while others identify as non-binary, makes for a master class in dealing with gender pronouns. This is clever, entertaining, and a lot of fun. I will be reading more!

i was going to read one more chapter then go to sleep. then i read six more chapters. then i cried. tenouttaten.

This was very sweet and weirdly cozy in its own way. I'll probably pick up the next one when I'm in the mood for something soothing. The characters are pretty good, and it's pleasant. It's a nice story but there's no real plot. There is absolutely no throughline involving a conflict, rising action, climax, and resolution.

Instead, there's an overarching mission that gives them a reason to sort of wagon train through the galaxy, and each chapter is a little vignette involving a stop along the way. And while the vignettes technically have conflict and stakes, they're barely established before they're resolved pretty neatly.

This is not a bad thing, but I was expecting much more “what happens next” energy when I picked this up. Instead, this is a series of fairly low-key character interactions, with occasional-but-brief moments of tension or serious emotional impacts. Instead of “what happens next” it's “hmm, let's check in with Rosemary and crew.”

That said, I liked a lot of the characters enough that I DO want to check in with them again!

3 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews

Summary
A mixed crew of space tunnelers takes a contract from one of the galaxy's more fractious species, but it takes them a long time to get where they need to be.

Review
I'm an optimist on many fronts, but a sceptic or even a cynic when it comes to popular acclaim. If I hear over and over about how great a thing is, I tamp down my expectations. If I hear it ad nauseam, I begin to think it's not great at all. Somehow, though, Becky Chambers' The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet escaped my norm. I can't say that I had to have it or read it, but when I saw a chance to pick it up, I did, and expected good things of it. Unfortunately, due to the size and virtual nature of my reading pile, I then forgot about it until I picked up a sequel at NetGalley – and found I already had the first.

I started Long Way, then, with optimism. I'd heard the book was funny and charming, and the series clearly had staying power. I'm sorry to say I was somewhat disappointed when I finally did dig in. The book is funny, and it is charming, but only from time to time, and in some places. While the characters are engaging, I found that after a while, I'd lost a good deal of my interest in them, and the book became something of a slog. Not so much racing to pick it up and see what happened next as picking it up so that I could finish it and get on to the next book.

That's a bit unfair – the book is nice – but it is pretty much how I felt by about page 300. The characters are nice, the plot is fine, but it all drags. Those nice characters are also perhaps a touch over-earnest, and a little too carefully calibrated to today's political environment. They're all carefully politically correct. That's fine; I am too. But it all felt too careful, too carefully colored within the lines to have much real passion.

Overall, I expected more. This is perfectly good, well written SF, but not something that really touched me or got me excited about a new author. I have book 4 in the series to read, and for once I don't feel too bad about skipping intervening books. I'm not sure I'd ever reach book 4 at the original pace.

Read via audiobook

I read this a couple years ago, but did a reread after picking up the rest of the series for cheap. I remembered it being sort of a lighthearted space adventure, and it primarily is that, but I'd forgotten how much work and detail Chambers puts into building characters with distinctly alien psychologies who are still recognizably people. Definitely worth a read just for that.

Okay, wow.
This book was a ride. A ride on the railway to emotions town!
(I don't why I picked this metaphor but ist 1 a.m. so I'm excused.)
So lemme tell you, I had high hopes going into it.
1. Good cover
2.character focused sci-fi
and
3. A good friend of mine really - like: REALLY - likes it.

An I gotta say, it didn't gripped me from the start. I was fairly intrigued by all the characters and their interactions with one another, as well as curious about the interplanetary locations we were going to discover.
And a major selling point were the characters for me. Hence I was a bit taken aback by the lack of individuality in their dialogue. Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of funny banter. Which is always nice to read. But I had my issues with bisecting the lines from one another. If you removed the name - pretty much everybody could have said the sentence. At least it felt like it.
But it definitely improved later on. Probably because I learned A LOT more about the personalities the crew mates are made of.
And oh boi do I love them now.
I do think that there is a lot more character development to be had and a lot more conflicts that could come up. Something that I am not content with.
Because I won't get it. It's pretty much a standalone and I dislike this fact and won't accept it. >:-(

And even though I love me some good conflicts between characters, that's not really the point of this story. (tho I got my fair share of it)
Sure there a high stakes, a plot and all that –
but I believe this story is about something deeper than that.
It's about Forgiveness. Acceptance. Love. Kindness. And Tolerance. Just life itself.

I don't really care that I didn't like the pacing of the first half or that I wish it had a different prose.
It doesn't matter to me as much. Because I saw what Becky tried to achieve with this novel. Values and themes she conveyed in such beautiful analogies.
Idk.
I just don't want to put my finger on the points that I wish were different.
She clearly focused everything about the things that matter most.

So why should I do it differently?

gezellig

Sweet and space-y.

2020: I think I was trying not to like this book the first time or something, by giving it 4 stars. Freaking love this entire series.

2017: This book was delightful! Inclusive, diverse, and really fun. I did find some things a bit unbelievable - even for a space opera - and the lack of conflict felt staid at times. Overall a great read and looking forward to reading the second book in the series.

This is the first book, that I can remember, that has made me laugh (multiple times) out loud(!) and cry. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet has firmly earned itself a place in my top favourite books of all time.

—

Having finished the book only a couple of days ago, I find myself missing the characters dearly. There's so much that this story had that I hold dearly to my heart and the story is woven with kindness, love and acceptance of others.

I also loved the writing style that Becky Chambers has. I was quickly introduced not only to the characters, but to their character and it was clear what was important to them and how the characters cared about each other.

Another detail in their writing that I noticed and appreciated, was that the mundane aspects of the story, which could easily pad out a book or potentially offer a few interesting scenes - they were entirely omitted. The crew have a successful “punch” (creating a wormhole), and so they decided to head plant-side for some drinks and celebration - it's not in the book. We pick up the next morning. Back with our characters and much more interesting exchanges happen. This happened a number of times and I personally found it refreshing that the story kept me connected to the characters.

The story is set in some distant future where space is explored, species have connected and human kind have spread themselves across the galaxies. But really it's about people (I think), our connections, what makes family, what matters.

I also really enjoyed that the bulk of the crew's journey was their story and that Chambers didn't throw in unnecessary suspense or tension. For me it make the characters and the world all that more real and believable.

It was hard not to fall in love with the crew too, especially the “core crew”, comprising of Kizzy and Jenks - the techheads, Sissex the super cool reptilian pilot, Dr Chef - a chef...and a doctor, and Ashby, the kind of captain and person that stands up for their crew and conducts and behaves in a way I wish I could all the time.

Then there was the fact that Chamber's characters don't adhere to (I hate to say) “normal”. The alien species approach family and sex differently. They approach gender and identity differently. They approach food and social situations differently. They read as believable and lovable because they're not just another carbon copy of the human archetype white male hero character.

This book is full of hope and love and it was exactly what I needed in my life in 2020. I cannot wait to read the next books set in this world.

I want these characters in my life and I miss them already.

Farscape + firefly + a nerdcore, polyam, mildly annoying but lovable queer DND meetup?

I should not have liked this book.
I read for enjoyment and what I enjoy is mostly science fiction and adventure.
In high school, it seemed that I was supposed to read books so I could write an insightful book report.
And a lot of the required books where just about the characters, their relationships and inner feelings.
Often the plot was limited to some character trying to figure out how to get the proper hat to wear to the ball.
Fortunately, starting in grade school, I discovered books like the Danny Dunn series and later, the Rick Brant series.
Throw in a heaping helping of Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke and I loved reading already before
my teachers tried to take the fun out out of it.
Now to this book.
It was everything I didn't like about literature.
But I loved it!
The author spend a long time telling us about the characters, their cultures and feelings
but along the way, there is a lot of world building, adventure and serious science fiction.
Very sneaky but it worked and I enjoyed this book very much.

A fun, multi-species adventure that's more about mutual understanding, emotion, and friendship than its sci-fi background, but in a good way. I'm not usually one for aliens, but Chambers paints a future that is at once humbling and heartwarming without falling into hackneyed idealism. The characters are deep and purposeful in their imperfect quests to be better, together.

Like everyone else has already said, nothing happens and these characters don't really experience any growth, but I sure did love them. They felt like extremely real and distinct people. The world building was fantastic too. This is a pretty low 4 stars because of the serious lack of plot though.

An absolutely delightful, slightly picaresque, romp through a well-realized galaxy of the future.

We need a name for this sub-genre, of which “Firefly” (the TV series) is the exemplar in the same way “Neuromancer” is the exemplar of cypber-punk. Whatever that sub-genre is, this is the best, most original, example of it I've read.

That said, it is entirely original: there is zero similarity to the characters and situations in “Firefly”, but it has the same vibe of a small independent ship with a crew of characters who are diverse and human, driven by different desires and often on each other's nerves.

The opening chunk is a bit heavy as we are introduced to the crew, because we aren't just learning their characters but their species, and it's a lot of information to absorb, but the author handles it just gently enough to make it digestible, and having set us on that solid foundation is free to explore their needs and wants with aplomb.

Pros:
+ Good worldbuilding.
+ Some characters are interesting.

Cons:
+ No real conflict or tension. This is the biggest flaw.
+ No real plot.
+ Some very cliched plot elements like the “in love with AI” person (without adding anything new that hasn't been done before).
+ Too many characters (and species!) so it's hard to keep them straight and they don't feel fleshed out. It doesn't help that there are too many POVs.

This book was okay. I learned a lot about the characters, but didn't feel like there was enough conflict to make their journey interesting.

A character-driven space opera with the highest priority on creating the found-family vibe for the multi-species crew of a patched-up spaceship tasked with building hyperspace tunnels. There isn't much plot or action, as we're spending most of our time getting to know the characters and the cultural and biological differences between the species (and about inter-species coupling). Which in principal I wouldn't mind, but it's a bit too simplified, exposition-heavy and hunky-dory for my taste. Nevertheless, this was sweet. I guess I like my scifi to be a bit colder and brainier.

Surprisingly this came as a recommendation from my mother who is very rarely into SF and she gave me her copy to read after she was done. It took me a while to feel ‘in the mood' for SF and I eventually picked it up earlier this year (2019) and I absolutely adored it.It made me think, it made me tear-up, it made me smile, it made me tense and I love the character-driven nature of it all. This is not your average ‘jump in the spaceship and go to war' sort of SF and it is all the better for it. This is a story about people and it happens to be in space. Gorgeous, interesting people with actual relationships that I really invested in.I found the inclusion of gender-variance and the exploration of self-hood very natural and not shoe-horned at all. The depiction of the different races' values and customs was well done and highlights where so much other SF is lacking. Chambers seems to have a mind much like my own in realising SF shouldn't be so human-centric. We shouldn't assume alien races would even want to know us let alone change their entire culture to accommodate us should we ever reach the stars.It doesn't hurt that the cover art for all three of the series is very tasty and I ordered [b:A Closed and Common Orbit 29475447 A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2) Becky Chambers https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1457598923s/29475447.jpg 48620653] immediately after finishing this one and I cannot wait to get started. Even if you are not a sci-fi person normally (like my mum), this is still well worth your time. It is an enlightening, inspirational and genuine pleasure to read.