The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky ChambersMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet came to fruition after a successful Kickstarter campaign after Becky Chambers went through difficulties finding stable work and thought she may have to stop writing the story for good. Luckily for us, the Kickstarter community are a clever bunch and could see what an astounding story Chambers had waiting for us tucked away inside her imagination.
The story tells of the crew of a tunneling ship, a team who are employed to make worm holes between two different far apart locations in order to enable free and easy travel between the two. This can normally be done by a variety of different ways, but the team's latest employ sees them having to travel for an entire standard to a contested region of unfamiliar space and having to take the long way around in order to get there (Creating the one gateway in known space, then travelling for a whole year to the other end to employ the other gateway and travel back through).
En route, the crew make a number of stops and run in to a number of issues and obstacles, during which time Chambers does a great job of describing the eclectic crew. A variety of species with different backgrounds and histories, you can really tell the cast have been thought about in such impressive detail as to really make them a believable cast, each with their own baggage and scenarios. From the ships friendly AI Lovey, to the Techies Kizzy and Jenks; The Captain and his love interest and the latest team's addition, Rosemary, a human clerk trying to desperately to leave her past behind. We have lizard races, infected races, and just annoying humans, but all are written about as to really make you feel like a member of the wayfarers crew.
This level of description extends the locations through the book - the planets and ports and even different areas of the ship are also conveyed with Chambers loving level of forethought.
The story whilst not groundbreaking, really kept me page turning right up until the end. I felt so invested with the entire crew I just had to find out how things would end. There are some genuinely frightening, moving, sad and exciting scenes throughout. I felt at times I was reading a novel taking direct inspiration from the world of Firefly.
There's a a lack of a common enemy in the book, replaced instead by lots of smaller individual story arcs for individual or smaller groups of the crew. This is no bad thing, and yes sure there are still bad guys and races set out to ruin things for our beloved crew, but no big bad Emperor or Klingon race to band against. Just lots of believable scenarios that could disrupt things for the crew we've come to know and love by the end of the book.
If you're a sci-fi fan of any description I can't recommend this book highly enough. It's well written, well considered and completely absorbing. For fans of Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly etc.
I've already got the sequel on order.
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