On the topic of difficult romance, Jenks, one of the ships engineers is in love with Lovey, the AI that runs the ship and who reciprocates his love. Sissix’s whole background story is fantastic by the way, with a whole bunch of observations about motherhood and polyamory relationships. My money was in its captain but the love story that develops is between Rosemary and the alien Sissix and they have an interspecies relationship that comes along with charmingly awkward discussions about what they need and how to get what they need from one another. I expected Rosemary to hook up with someone aboard the Wayfarer and she does eventually. She does have a Big Secret and she might have lied about who she is, but she is at the end of the day, still a competent clerk and she saves the day multiple times by reading up on rules and history. Starting with Rosemary – who like I said, is a clerk. To me, this is the space opera of my dreams in how it subverted all my expectations. This right there, tells you everything you need to know about how The Long Way To A Small, Long Planet works as a novel: each reader’s mileage will vary in terms of how they take the novel’s episodic nature, its slow pacing, the lackadaisical plotting, and above all, the incredible positivity when it comes to its characters’ arcs. That’s right: what the Wayfarer needs to be taken more seriously as a space road-builder is a clerk: not a fighter, or a security guard, or anything more dramatic. Most of them, from captain to clerk, from doctor to pilot, from navigator to AI get a moment to shine, in vignettes-like sections that function as puzzle pieces that when put together form a whole that is both picturesque and charming.Īt first we are introduced to the Wayfarer and its crew by their new member, a woman named Rosemary, a clerk from Mars, someone On the Run and who has a Secret to Hide, hired to give the Wayfarer a semblance of authority and professionalism – the edge they needed in order to secure more stable work. Its plot is exactly as stated in its title, the chapters divided as in episodes, the viewpoints as many as its main characters, the Wayfarer’s main crew. The Long Way To A Small, Long Planet is a character-driven piece. Thus begins the Wayfarer’s journey to a small angry planet, via the long – long – way. The destination: a planet inhabited by an alien race that up until now had been hostile to the GC. Crewed by a ragtag team, the Wayfarer has just accepted a new mission: to build a wormhole in a part of space where no road has ever been built before. In a galaxy far, far away, in a future where Earth is no longer inhabitable and humans have only just been accepted as equal within the Galactic Commons of alien races, a small spaceship named Wayfarer traverses the vastness of space building wormholes, the roads that connect distant galaxies and systems. How did we get this book: ARCs from the publisher Stand alone or series: Stand alone, possibly more to come? Set against a backdrop of curious cultures and distant worlds, this episodic tale weaves together the adventures of nine eclectic characters, each on a journey of their own. A pacifist captain, awaiting the return of a loved one at war. An alien pilot, navigating life without her own kind. A young Martian woman, hoping the vastness of space will put some distance between herself and the life she‘s left behind. This is an everyday sort of ship, just trying to get from here to there.īut all voyages leave their mark, and even the most ordinary of people have stories worth telling. To the galaxy at large, humanity is a minor species, and one patched-up construction vessel is a mere speck on the starchart. Somewhere within our crowded sky, a crew of wormhole builders hops from planet to planet, on their way to the job of a lifetime. Publication Date: July 2014 / August 2015 Title: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet Originally a self-published novel and soon to be published as hardcover by Hodder in the UK, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers has earned acolytes, enthusiastic reviews and a Kitschies nomination.
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