A friend highly recommended The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. With so many books on my reading list I didn’t think it would be possible to get to this, so I opted to try to audio book.
Wayfarer is an everyday sort of ship, just trying to get from here to there. To the galaxy at large, humanity is a minor species. But all voyages leave their mark, and even the most ordinary of people have stories worth telling. 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.
I don’t really want to give anything away and honestly it is so richly complex that I’m not sure I can really summarize this book. I lack the vocabulary to do this book justice to portray the elegant way the universe is created through little details of life and habits. I lack the eloquence to describe the food and the soap and wine and small intricacies of life in space that Chambers weaves into the story. I will no doubt be inadequate to express the characters, their complex lives outside the plot, the expansive ideas of what a person can be, and their beautiful, beautiful relationships. I will also fall short of explaining the interaction of the alien species, the coming together, the falling apart, and the (mis)understandings. But most importantly I lack the ability to articulate the love of love in this book, the many ways of different people being together – as friends, as family, a colleagues and collaborators, as lovers, pairs, and more.
But I can clearly say that the wait for book two, even though it is coming out in a few weeks, will most definitely kill me.
