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Reading: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet
I bought Becky Chambers' The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet a couple of months ago because Amazon kept recommending it to me, and it looked interesting and had decent reviews. I first tried reading it a few weeks ago, after I'd finished Men as Arms, and somehow didn't get on with it then (I think basically because Pterry is a hard act to follow), but I went back to it after The Silkworm and liked it a lot more.
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is a space opera, set at some undefined point in the fairly distant future, after humanity has abandoned a mostly-destroyed Earth and spread through the galaxy, meeting other species and eventually being admitted to membership of the "Galactic Commons" with other sentient species. It centres on the crew of the Wayfarer, a tunnelling ship which creates artificial wormholes to speed up travel through space; five humans, three aliens from different species, and the ship's fully sentient AI. The structure is largely episodic; I thought it felt rather like a novelised version of a TV SF series, and the novel certainly showed the influence of various TV shows (most noticeably, I think, Firefly - the ship's mechanical technician, Kizzy, in particular seemed very reminiscent of Kaylee - and Red Dwarf, though the alien species were more like Star Wars in their biological difference from humans). The episodes explored various issues, mainly relating to the resolution of cultural conflicts, which occasionally seemed to be a bit too obvious in their parallels to real-world issues, and most problems seemed to be solved with surprisingly little difficulty. I also felt that one character's journey from wide-eyed innocent to wise woman in the space of about six months was possibly a little bit implausible.
All these are minor cavils, though. Basically, I enjoyed the book. It's not in the same league as Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books, or indeed as Pratchett; basically, it's SF fluff, but it was fun, and the characters were engaging and likeable, and sometimes it's nice to read a vision of the future that isn't full of grim warnings.
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is a space opera, set at some undefined point in the fairly distant future, after humanity has abandoned a mostly-destroyed Earth and spread through the galaxy, meeting other species and eventually being admitted to membership of the "Galactic Commons" with other sentient species. It centres on the crew of the Wayfarer, a tunnelling ship which creates artificial wormholes to speed up travel through space; five humans, three aliens from different species, and the ship's fully sentient AI. The structure is largely episodic; I thought it felt rather like a novelised version of a TV SF series, and the novel certainly showed the influence of various TV shows (most noticeably, I think, Firefly - the ship's mechanical technician, Kizzy, in particular seemed very reminiscent of Kaylee - and Red Dwarf, though the alien species were more like Star Wars in their biological difference from humans). The episodes explored various issues, mainly relating to the resolution of cultural conflicts, which occasionally seemed to be a bit too obvious in their parallels to real-world issues, and most problems seemed to be solved with surprisingly little difficulty. I also felt that one character's journey from wide-eyed innocent to wise woman in the space of about six months was possibly a little bit implausible.
All these are minor cavils, though. Basically, I enjoyed the book. It's not in the same league as Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books, or indeed as Pratchett; basically, it's SF fluff, but it was fun, and the characters were engaging and likeable, and sometimes it's nice to read a vision of the future that isn't full of grim warnings.