5 Reasons 'The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet' Will Be Your Next Sci-Fi Addiction

5 Reasons ‘The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet’ will be your next Science Fiction addiction.

Introduction:

Every year on my birthday Mark takes me into Norwich to our local Waterstones to go book shopping. This year, I had a lot of books I wanted to check out, but there was one series in particular I knew I just had to walk away with, and that series was The Wayfarers Series by Becky Chambers.

Now, I’ve only just finished reading book one titled The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet but I loved the book so much I just had to write a feature on it so that I could share it with everyone.

Seriously guys, I haven’t been this hooked by a Science Fiction writer since I first discovered Douglas Adams and A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, so buckle up and hang on as I blow your mind with why this book should NEEDS to punch it’s way through time and space and onto the top of your TBR!

Cover and Synopsis:

SYNOPSIS: Follow a motley crew on an exciting journey through space-and one adventurous young explorer who discovers the meaning of family in the far reaches of the universe-in this light-hearted debut space opera from a rising sci-fi star.

Rosemary Harper doesn’t expect much when she joins the crew of the aging Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and most importantly, some distance from her past. An introspective young woman who learned early to keep to herself, she’s never met anyone remotely like the ship’s diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks who keep the ship running, and Ashby, their noble captain.

Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy—exactly what Rosemary wants. It’s also about to get extremely dangerous when the crew is offered the job of a lifetime. Tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet is definitely lucrative and will keep them comfortable for years. But risking her life wasn’t part of the plan. In the far reaches of deep space, the tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling adventures that force them to depend on each other. To survive, Rosemary’s got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs—an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the universe. 

Why You Need To Read This Book

1)    The characters feel like family.

I’m honestly not sure how to explain how Chambers manages to create such three-dimensional characters. As an author myself, I have crafted imaginary people who are both loved, and hated, but honestly Chambers takes this to a whole new level.

The crew of the Wayfarer is a hodge-podge of Alien species, and yet as we meet each and every one, we come to love them as if they were human… or perhaps because of the ways in which they are not human. Rosemary, who has just joined the crew, facilitates us meeting them anew, and coming to love each and every member of this mismatched crew throughout the course of the novel as family. I didn’t want to read the last page, because honestly, the characters were people I didn’t want to stop hanging out with.

Whether it’s Sissix, and her charming urge to nuzzle everyone as is her cultural norm, or Ohan who is ailing from the virus his people take on as holy duty to became ‘they’ instead of ‘he’ we find something oddly relatable in every single character.

Ashby, the Captain, bridges the gaps of race, species, sexual orientation, and gender identity, as we watch the crew navigate one another with laugh out loud banter, familial friction, and a kind of acceptance of one another that is enviable to any reader who has ever felt outcast because of who they truly are.

Kizzy, who quickly became my favourite character, doesn’t seem to see race or species at all, as her eccentric personality includes being affectionate with everyone and treating them with equal quirkiness no matter the situation. She has a kind of innocence that I found endearing, and the details and individualities of her made me wish she was real.

Even Corbin, who we all start the book firmly disliking, becomes relatable and understandable throughout the course of the Wayfarers journey, and we find ourselves sympathising with him despite ourselves.

2)    The world building is quirky and enchanting.

I loved the way this author built her Science Fiction universe. We feel right at home among the seeming drudgery of The Wayfarer’s duty, a kind of highway maintenance but with physics that are best described by Kizzy using fruit, oatmeal, and napkins. I loved the way each character aboard the Wayfarer shows us a different side of Alien Culture, as well as how tiny details such as Kizzy’s obsession with Fire Shrimp, and Dr Chef’s gardening prowess made the story come alive as much as any of the main plot points. We are treated to several planets during the course of the novel, my favourite of which was Cricket, where enormous locust like bugs swarm regularly, causing the residents to barbeque their corpses under shields which are pounded by the still living kill of their next meal. Each of the worlds are different, and Chambers also gives us a look into familiar worlds such as Mars, and Earth, and what has become of them during the years since they have joined the Galactic Commons.

It’s hard to encapsulate such skilfully created settings and cultures here in such a brief paragraph, but all I can say is that if you loved The HitchHiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in all it’s craziness, in all it’s exquisite oddities, then this book is perfect for you, and doesn’t hold back on the enchanting and quirky details that bring Science Fiction in deep space truly to life.

3)    The characters are super diverse.

One of the things I really enjoyed seeing in this novel was the way that diversity isn’t highlighted. It simply is. We aren’t given a teething period with regards to all the different species, gender identities, and sexual orientations. We, as the reader, are thrown just like Rosemary right into the deep end with Dr. Chef who is now male but was once female, Ohan who responds only to pronouns that respect his holy duty as an incubator to a virus which has dramatically shortened his life span, and Sissix who’s culture is infamous for it’s group sex and lack of maternal attachment to its subsequent young.

We are shown that yes, racial tensions exist, but on the whole each character is seen as an individual rather than what gender they identify with, who they love, or how they choose to express their identity. Not only that, but we even see Jenks fall in love with LoveLace the ship’s AI, and Ashby fully support and accept him during the course of events that tie up the novel’s heart-breaking conclusion

4)    The narrative is choppy yet enthralling.

The way this book is written is simply brilliant, especially in its structure. We aren’t dragged through a lot of technical details with how things work, barring the necessary in the first few chapters, but are instead given what we need to follow the character ARCs of the crew as closely and avidly as possible.

I loved this way of storytelling, because it meant that we felt more connected to the characters, without being overloaded by unnecessary details which may be enjoyed by the science fiction reader, but I feel in this novel would have been redundant. I loved the group scenes in this book, as well as how the constant banter kept the pace fast and enthralling throughout the book. The narrative was choppy, but in the absolute best way as we driven from one paragraph to the next, hungry for more.

5)    It makes you think differently about humanity, ethics, and philosophy.

Like any good Science Fiction novel, this book gives us a way to not only see the fictional universe, but a lens through which to view our own differently and comparatively. We are made to question our own judgements when it comes to what we view as love, how we view our own culture and how it may be seen as odd by other species, as well as being made to question the nature of family. I was made to think about the rights afforded to an AI which is arguably sentient and therefore owed some kind of freedom from it’s creators, and freedom to choose it’s own fate. We see Corbin, who discovers later on in the novel that he is not what he originally thought himself to be, that what we are labelled as by society does not intrinsically change who we are if we do not let it. Throughout the novel, we are presented with different ideologies surrounding earth, such as Gaiists, as well as the Galactic Commons who are on the face of things, a good cause, but when we dig deeper we find the same bureaucratic and political corruptions that we see in many places here and now. It’s funny because the more you read this universe that Chambers has created, the more you realise that what she’s created is actually a warped reflection of current reality, and it harrows as much as it is enlightens.

Conclusion:

To conclude, the readability of this book for me was incredibly high, and I know that I’ll love it just as much on third reading as I did on the first. I am also eager to start the next two books in the series, A Closed and common Orbit, and, Record of a Spaceborn few as well as pre-ordering a signed copy of the next addition which is releasing in February of 2021.

I am incredibly curious to find out what becomes of the characters I’ve come to know and love, and to discover new planets, races, and what the future holds for the Galactic Commons as well as the humans of this incredible series. You can expect in depth reviews of the other books in the series from me in the coming weeks, but believe me when I say that you shouldn’t wait to start your journey in this incredible Fictional Universe, it’s absolutely mind blowing!

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