Review- "The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet" by Becky Chambers

In the past year or so I have sadly found myself disappointed, or worse ambivalent, in the "fun books" I was able to fit into my graduate school schedule. Perhaps this was was own melancholy, or maybe I just fell out of love with the sci-fi/ fantasy genre (too much post-apocalyptic teen drama right now). So this past weekend I wasn't expecting the random book I picked off a Barnes and Noble shelf to be all that entertaining. However, much to my surprise The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers ended up being a great surprise and a delightful look at the lives of the crew of the Wayfarer.

The Long Way... follows a young woman named Rosemary as she joins up as a clerk on the wormhole-building ship the Wayfarer. Rosemary, who has some skeletons in her closet, then meets the ships eccentric crew as they embark on a year long mission to open up a new wormhole in a recently opened region of the galaxy, which may be the make or break moment for the small ship and its amicable crew.

There's a lot to love about this book. The characters, especially Kizzy and Sizzix (dinosaur person!!!), are vibrant and relatable. The personalities of all of the crew, with one noticeable exception, are all believable and just feel so real that you can feel the love that Chambers put into making them. Even the A.I. Lovey and the non-human Sapients (the books catch-all term for intelligent lifeforms) of the crew don't feel like cookie cutter characters. Sizzix and Dr. Chef both are given a close look at their cultural differences as seen through Rosemary's eyes, but the cultural discourse at play in the book makes them both vastly different yet still very "human." 

There are also several surprises in the book, especially in regards to mankind's own development as they spread through the galaxy. I liked the differences between Rosemary, the "Martian" and Captain Ashby, a descendant from Earth explorers. There are also several side characters who are hard not to enjoy, which in the wrong hands could have distracted from the episodic look at the Wayfarer's crew members.

All in all, there really isn't all that much I had a problem with. I did feel like the surprise romance could have used more of a build up, and the Algeist Corbin could have been given more page time in the first half of the book, to fill out his character growth. Nothing too earth shattering though. By the way, Earth still exists in the book, don't worry about it!

This book, while it may fall under the genre of sci-fi space opera isn't a heavy-handed piece of science fiction. It isn't 2001 or Ender's Game. Its an intimate look at the lives of crew. The good, the bad, and the ugly and how the idea of family keeps them all from falling apart, even when their specific cultural definitions on the matter differ. As a book I randomly picked up, it has quickly become one of my favorite in the genre in recent years. If you are a fan of Firefly and light sci-fi definitely give it a read.

Overall, I give it 4.5 out of 5 Mews.

Oh, and a sequel is coming out this fall. Check out Becky Chambers' website for more info.