REVIEW: The Long Way to a Small Angry planet by Becky Chambers
A rollicking space adventure with a lot of heart
When Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer, she isn’t expecting much. The patched-up ship has seen better days, but it offers her everything she could possibly want: a spot to call home, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and some distance from her past.
And nothing could be further from what she’s known than the crew of the Wayfarer.
From Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, to Kizzy and Jenks, the chatty engineers who keep the ship running, to the noble captain Ashby, life aboard is chaotic and crazy—exactly what Rosemary wants. That is until the crew is offered the job of a lifetime tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet. Sure, they’ll earn enough money to live comfortably for years, but risking her life wasn’t part of the job description.
The journey through the galaxy is full of excitement, adventure, and mishaps for the Wayfarer team. And along the way, Rosemary comes to realize that a crew is a family, and that family isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the universe…as long as you actually like them.
Review:
Dear Becky Chambers, I saw your book being mentioned on File 770 and couple of commenters seemed to like it so much that they were going to nominate you for next year’s Campbell award. When I did a little more digging it seemed that the book promised a secondary f/f romance between two crew members. And I said, once again, “sign me up” and one clicked it. Sadly, I gave up at about 65% of the book, which I think was more than enough since the whole book is a little over 400 pages long on my Kindle.
I won’t deny that first and foremost my DNF review is a case of unfulfilled expectations, but you see my expectations came from the book being billed as “space opera” by Amazon and the publisher, so it is not like I formed them at random. I do not expect all scifi books to have a lot of action, but with a book which claims to be *space opera* I do expect it. I even went to Wiki and checked their definition to make sure I remembered it correctly.
“Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in outer space and often romance (heroic literature). It usually involves conflict between opponents possessing advanced abilities, futuristic weapons and other sophisticated technology”
So, at the place in the story when I said I could not keep reading, the first significant action which was influenced by the war taking place off page, finally happened. And when I say action, I mean that one of the “Wayfarer” crew members helped other ship deactivate some mines installed by somebody else. Don’t get me wrong, that was a lot more excitement than I had experienced throughout previous sixty percent of the book, but it still did not rise nearly to the level of action I usually see in the “space operas”. Before this section I had actually held out hope that something dangerous and exciting was going to occur at around forty percent of the book, and maybe our team would suffer some serious damage. Alas, it was ridiculous, but it actually ended almost peacefully , except their captain suffered a not very serious wound and it was even kind of his fault.
“Did you touch your face at all while you were talking to the Akarak captain? Like you are doing now?”
“Um, yeah, maybe.” Ashby pushed through the fog, trying to remember. “I don’t know, it all happened so fast.”
“Something like this, maybe?”
“Rosemary rubbed her eyes with her palm, as if she had a headache.
“Possibly. Yeah. Yeah, I think I did.”
Rosemary grimaced. “That explains it. See, this —“ She tucked her thumb back and held her fingers straight and flat, making her hand into a rough imitation of a Harmagian dactylus. She flexed her hand over her eyes, twice.” – is a really offensive thing to Harmagians. And those Akaraks’ gestures and dialect were very Harmagian – influenced.”
“What’s it mean?”
Rosemary cleared her throat. “It means you’d rather rub shit in your eyes than keep talking to them.”
I think my first warning sign that the author was trying to subvert the genre was the fact that Captain Ashby did not allow weapons on his ship. Granted they are civilians, they are tunneling wormholes through space and not fighting, but there is still danger in this galaxy, even if the war only rages in only a few areas, from what I could understand. Moreover, when they get this new job of tunneling to the planet on behalf of a species who only recently joined the “Galactic commons” and was considered pretty dangerous, Captain Ashby’s “no weapons” stand became more than a little ridiculous for me.
Maybe I should backtrack, because I started my review with complaints and I can see how other people might find a lot of things to like about it. It is well written, the author makes a sincere attempt to do detailed world-building, and there are very nice, very interesting characters. Heck, *I* really liked the crew of Wayfarer when the author was introducing me to them through Rosemary. I think that in order to avoid obvious information dumping, the author has Rosemary learn about her teammates and their customs (and thank goodness not all of them are human, and the non-human ones do not just look like barely altered humans). And there was a lot and lot of information about their customs and how to treat the other species. A lot.
So, yes, I really liked these guys, until the huge amount of information bored me silly. I love character based stories, I like character studies. And I absolutely welcome well done characters who also participate in awesome adventures. This book fell far short of awesome adventure and I want *space opera* to provide me that. If there was one in the last 35% of the book, I will never know.
DNF.
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I read this because Rosario had given it a thumbs up, and I liked the title.
Unfortunately that was about 6 months ago, so I’m blanking on details, but I know I enjoyed it.
I agree it is a slower story than I was originally expecting but I liked the book. Space is probaly a quite boring place to work, albeit with the possibility of a sudden and nasty death always present. You did miss out on quite a lot of action at the end but I think the blurb does the book a miss service in presenting it as a space opera rather than say, a novel. Space opera raises too many expectations.
@Marianne McA: And I can absolutely see how this book can work very well for other readers. I mean obviously any book that I did not care for may work for other readers, but you know how it is – sometimes you just don’t think that the book is strong, and sometimes the book just did not work for you, but it was executed well. I think this book was executed well, but it eventually did not work for me.
@HelenB: Maybe I will go back one day then :). Absolutely, space operas subjenre is not the only SFF I read or like and if it was not there, my expectations probably would have been different.
If I’m promised “A rollicking space adventure” then that’s what I’m expecting and what I want to read. I put this one in my Amazon wish list after it was a featured Daily Deal a week or so back but I’m going to have to ponder it some more.
@Jayne: 65% of the book does not have much of adventure happening, I can tell you this at least. Check the sample I guess?
I bought this when it was on the $1.99 daily deal because Rosario of Rosario’s Reading Journal compared it to The Goblin Emperor, but after reading your review, I returned it to Amazon. You’re the second person I know who didn’t finish it, Sirius, but since you’ve read The Goblin Emperor, I have to ask, what are the similarities?
@Janine: I am honestly not sure what similarities were there. IMO none. Maybe detailed description of what different species are? No idea.
I skimmed the last 10% or so, just to try and remember something about it – something more space-opera-y does happen towards the end of the book, but I don’t know that it qualifies as an awesome adventure. I didn’t skim the body of the book, but perhaps the title describes the form of the story quite neatly, with the ‘long way’ section quite meandering and episodic and the ‘small angry planet’ part more focused and climactic.
Janine – I wouldn’t mentally shelve it near to The Goblin Emperor, but I think there is a similarity in that it’s a book about good people – not necessarily flawless people, or people who always make the right choices, or even people that you would want to be stuck in space with – but both books leave you feeling positive about humanity. (My brain is fried: I can’t think of a word that is equivalent to ‘humanity’ but would read inclusive of goblins and aliens. Sentient life-formity?)
Sirius – I can see why it didn’t work for you. It was just that if I see a DNF review from someone like yourself, I normally don’t consider reading the book thereafter unless there are other opinions in the comments, so I just wanted to mention I’d liked it.
@Marianne McA: Oh of course, please keep mentioning if you liked the book I did not and vice versa this goes without saying!
I dont do DNF reviews usually, this is my first , first long one, I did a very brief one in my reading list before, but that’s it.
And yeah, this was not a DNF because I disliked the execution of the book. Well, I did, but it was based on my expectations set by the blurb, not based on how it was written.
@Marianne McA: And this was a great point about similarity to “Goblin emperor”. It would not have enter my mind, because to me similarity means something more specific, but it makes sense.
@Marianne McA: Thanks for explaining that. I don’t know if it’s enough to sway me toward purchasing it again, but it’s good information to have. It’s true that sense of humanity was one of the lovey things about The Goblin Emperor, but the intricate worldbuilding was also a big part of its charm.
Now, I read that blurb and immediately thought “Firefly”. But your review sounds as if it’s not even in the same galaxy.
Thanks for this review, Sirius, your tastes and mine tend to align so I’m always interested in what you love and what you wind up tossing at the wall.
Hmm, I think knowing going in that it’s a slower character drama than space opera I might enjoy it thanks to different expectations (although yeah, I’d be bothered by the same things you were). I just read Chaos Station (finally!!), which I enjoyed so much I bought the next two books in the series immediately after, and I really would like to see more sci-fi romance, especially f/f and m/m.
This just shows how important cover blurbs or listing blurbs are in setting up reader expectations, seriously!
As Marianne McA and Janine mentioned, I really liked this one. I came in knowing exactly what to expect in terms of tone and… eventfulness, I suppose, and I think that makes a difference with this one. It’s a book to read when you’re in the right mood for it (in my case, I read it while at a yoga weekend retreat!). If you start it expecting excitement, it’s going to bore you to tears.
@Marianne McA: Re: the comparison with The Goblin Emperor, that’s exactly it. And it wasn’t so much that the books themselves were similar, but that they made me feel the same way, if that makes sense.
@Rosario: yoga retreat sounds like a perfect place to read this book :). Yes I started expecting excitement and yes it eventually bored me to tears .
@Lindsay: blurbs are very important to me, absolutely. When I am in the adventurous mood I can and did purchase the books based on the blurbs alone. Well I hope you will enjoy it if you end up getting it.
@Sandra: one day I will watch “Firefly”. I just know it :-).