The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

Paperback, 404 pages

English language

Published July 16, 2015 by Hodder & Stoughton.

ISBN:: 978-1-4736-1981-4

When Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer, she isn't expecting much. The Wayfarer, a patched-up ship that's seen better days, offers her everything she could possibly want: a small, quiet spot to call home for a while, adventure in far-off corners of the galaxy, and distance from her troubled past. But Rosemary gets more than she bargained for with the Wayfarer. The crew is a mishmash of species and personalities, from Sissix, the friendly reptilian pilot, to Kizzy and Jenks, the constantly sparring engineers who keep the ship running. Life on board is chaotic, but more or less peaceful - exactly what Rosemary wants. Until the crew are offered the job of a lifetime: the chance to build a hyperspace tunnel to a distant planet.

15 editions

mikerickson@bookwyrm.social reviewed The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (Wayfarers, #1)

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4 stars

Went in expecting a cozy, low-stakes sci-fi romp with Found Family tropes abound, and I got... something that was all that but also something that was occasionally darker and threatening? Not in a, "this was two completely separate books poorly smashed together" kind of way but more like a work that isn't afraid to hold the good with the bad at the same time. I don't know if this makes sense, but what I'm getting at is that it surpassed my expectations.

There's a big cast of characters here and while I was originally afraid we'd only be tied to two of the main protagonists for most of the book, we actually get a fair amount of separate POV chapters, and I think the book benefited from that. As with any new speculative fiction setting, there's going to be some worldbuilding, but most of it here was handled in-fiction …

Went in expecting a cozy, low-stakes sci-fi romp with Found Family tropes abound, and I got... something that was all that but also something that was occasionally darker and threatening? Not in a, "this was two completely separate books poorly smashed together" kind of way but more like a work that isn't afraid to hold the good with the bad at the same time. I don't know if this makes sense, but what I'm getting at is that it surpassed my expectations.

There's a big cast of characters here and while I was originally afraid we'd only be tied to two of the main protagonists for most of the book, we actually get a fair amount of separate POV chapters, and I think the book benefited from that. As with any new speculative fiction setting, there's going to be some worldbuilding, but most of it here was handled in-fiction through dialogue between characters, so it came across as more natural and conversational than paragraphs of dry lore-dumping. And even despite the presentation, the content was engaging enough that I wouldn't mind revisiting this universe again. There are a few alien races that are touched upon that genuinely felt alien to me and I wanted to know more about them.

The middle sort of... I feel like the word "sags" is a little too harsh, because there is constant dramatic action, but the central task this crew is trying to achieve often feels like something just passively lingering in the background instead of the main driving impetus for everything else going on. I guess when you have a job that will take literal months to complete and there's nothing you can do to speed it up you're naturally gonna have a ton of downtime to explore all these side characters, but I suppose I would've preferred a bit more urgency and momentum throughout. Still, I can see the appeal of a more leisurely narrative pace like this. If I do continue with the series, I feel like I'll have a better set of expectations going into it.