Audiobook
English language
Published June 14, 2018 by Hodderscape.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience!
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEY'S WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION
The beloved debut novel that will restore your faith in humanity
When Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer, she isn't expecting much. The ship, which has seen better days, offers her everything she could possibly want: a small, quiet spot to call home for a while, adventure in far-off corners of the galaxy, and distance from her troubled past.
But Rosemary gets more than she bargained for with the Wayfarer. The crew is a mishmash of species and personalities, from Sissix, the friendly reptillian pilot, to Kizzy and Jenks, the constantly sparring engineers who keep the ship running. Life on board is chaotic, but more or less peaceful - exactly what Rosemary wants.
Until the crew are offered the job …
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience!
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEY'S WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION
The beloved debut novel that will restore your faith in humanity
When Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer, she isn't expecting much. The ship, which has seen better days, offers her everything she could possibly want: a small, quiet spot to call home for a while, adventure in far-off corners of the galaxy, and distance from her troubled past.
But Rosemary gets more than she bargained for with the Wayfarer. The crew is a mishmash of species and personalities, from Sissix, the friendly reptillian pilot, to Kizzy and Jenks, the constantly sparring engineers who keep the ship running. Life on board is chaotic, but more or less peaceful - exactly what Rosemary wants.
Until the crew are offered the job of a lifetime: the chance to build a hyperspace tunnel to a distant planet. They'll earn enough money to live comfortably for years... if they survive the long trip through war-torn interstellar space without endangering any of the fragile alliances that keep the galaxy peaceful.
But Rosemary isn't the only person on board with secrets to hide, and the crew will soon discover that space may be vast, but spaceships are very small indeed.
Booktrack is an immersive format that pairs traditional audiobook narration and complementary music. The tempo and rhythm of the score are in perfect harmony with the action and characters throughout the audiobook. Gently playing in the background, the music never overpowers or distracts from the narration so that listeners can enjoy every minute. When you purchase this Booktrack edition, you receive the exact narration as the traditional audiobook available, with the addition of music throughout.
Frustrating. All that world building and zero narrative arc -- some random stuff happens, lots of future/alien sex every which way, the end.
Well this book made me cry and want to run away and find my own Wayfarer.
It would have been so nice.
There's space lesbianism, fluffy aliens, cool characters & polyamory.
The plot was not overly captivating and felt a bit haphazard and aimless, but that would have been okay if the book had been enjoyable...
Which it really would have been, were it not for the ableism.
It's full of ableist slurs & comparisons, with a free inspiration porn scene on top where one of the characters meets one from their own species who has a condition that's not called autism, but described exactly as autism is usually described. And then the character is nice to the space autistic who is eternally grateful for 10 minutes of kindness and they have totally changed each other's lives!!!!
That felt like a punch in the face.
So no, do not recommend. Sorry.
I love the characters and the universe that Becky has created with this book, it was really refreshing for a sci-fi genre book where they're often more about the tech than the personalities. I was ga-ga for the book by the one-third point, the second third dragged a bit and I was anxious to have something a bit more exciting happen, but the last third was good. I was trying to decide between 4-star and 5-stars after the first third of the book, it was closer to 3-stars for the next two parts.
I'll definitely be reading the next in the series, and I'd recommend this to friends who are interested in sci-fi genre books that have really fun characters and personalities in their stories.
This book really didn't work for me. I've read many good reviews and praises due to its fresh take on sci-fi showing the day-to-day lives of a mixed raced crew in a spaceship. It is a character driven story so there's no big epic plot going on. But that's not the problem. I enjoy character driven stories. The problem I had was that the personal stories were mostly uninteresting to me. I thought the character's backgrounds were loosely written and although there's a lot of world building, something was missing to make the story elements stand together cohesively.
And maybe it had too much "feel-good" vibes for my taste. The world has its conflicts, there are some mean people, but overall everything had a good ending.
And the pace, well, it's definitely not action-packed. I felt I was going through a sitcom with lots of mundane tasks going on.
There …
This book really didn't work for me. I've read many good reviews and praises due to its fresh take on sci-fi showing the day-to-day lives of a mixed raced crew in a spaceship. It is a character driven story so there's no big epic plot going on. But that's not the problem. I enjoy character driven stories. The problem I had was that the personal stories were mostly uninteresting to me. I thought the character's backgrounds were loosely written and although there's a lot of world building, something was missing to make the story elements stand together cohesively.
And maybe it had too much "feel-good" vibes for my taste. The world has its conflicts, there are some mean people, but overall everything had a good ending.
And the pace, well, it's definitely not action-packed. I felt I was going through a sitcom with lots of mundane tasks going on.
There were some positive points:
- Diversity: the depiction of different sentient races living together, with cultural and biological differences.
- The discussion of what is a relationship, what is love, what is family? Can humans love other races? Can humans and AIs be lovers?
- The non-biased view of gender and sex: some people change sex during their lifetime, some are neither a "she" ou a "he", some are not a single person but are addressed as "they".
- The discussion if AI's have rights or if they can live independently.
- My favorite characters were Jenks and Lovey (who was the AI of the ship) and their relationship. Although it was not a profound discussion, I was happy to see this kind of issue being addressed in such a cozy sci-fi.
It's full of great ideas, the author took the time to imagine a huge world with lots of races (Mass Effect feelings, anyone?) but it was loosely woven for me. The way to the Angry Planet was too long, indeed.
Soooo many metaphors :-) Beginning from the title itself, to the story's titular planet and its inhabitants, to all the species mentioned throughout the journey and their lovingly crafted relationships. It's the Long Way that counts, both in the book's story and the enjoyment I got from it.
4.5 stars
The most enjoyable sci-fi book I've read in a long time. I love Alistair Reynolds, and Chambers is the opposite of him - but in the best possible way. Another reviewer described this as "feel-good sci-fi", and I couldn't agree more. Well-written, entertaining, superbly paced, funny and touching in equal measure. I was very happy to find out this won't be a one off.
This was excellent for several reasons: the multiple types of prejudice and small-mindedness the crew address, the fresh and humbling approach to humanity's future, the endearing fullness of the characters, the pleasant honesty of the dialogue... There's a lot to appreciate. Highly recommended.
A warm, funny, very human piece of science fiction.
At the heart of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is a crew of the most lovely, amazing characters ever to set foot on a spaceship. Rosemary might set off on the wrong foot, being given the tour by the grumpiest member, and worrying that her past will catch up with her, but this isn’t setting the scene for strife. This is a ship of good people.
In the future, the human race isn’t at the top of the hierarchy. Quite the opposite, they were only just allowed to be let into the GC, what with many other species looking down on them. As Wayfarer travels towards Hedra Ka, the readers learns about different cultures and quite how absurd some of the things we take for granted might seem to another sentient species.
Why would social structures be the same as 20th century Earth’s in cultures that have …
At the heart of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is a crew of the most lovely, amazing characters ever to set foot on a spaceship. Rosemary might set off on the wrong foot, being given the tour by the grumpiest member, and worrying that her past will catch up with her, but this isn’t setting the scene for strife. This is a ship of good people.
In the future, the human race isn’t at the top of the hierarchy. Quite the opposite, they were only just allowed to be let into the GC, what with many other species looking down on them. As Wayfarer travels towards Hedra Ka, the readers learns about different cultures and quite how absurd some of the things we take for granted might seem to another sentient species.
Why would social structures be the same as 20th century Earth’s in cultures that have evolved independently to ours? Of course they wouldn’t, and we see a variety of different identities and ways of living. The key thing to note about this story is the overarching acceptance of differences. It’s just lovely. The writing uses a variety of pronouns, for those species that are genderless, or to be polite when you don’t know what gender someone identifies as. There is also the use of they for Ohan.
Oh Ohan. I cried over pretty much every part of their story. For some reason I had them pictured as a sort of blue orang-utan though, anyone else? How hard to watch friends waste away, but knowing it’s their own choice, their own beliefs sending them to their grave.
Lovey has got to be the best AI ever. I’m not sure I’ve ever cried over a fictional computer before. Whilst the universe seems so liberal in many ways, there are still prejudices. What about life artificially created, does that not deserve the same rights as anyone else? It’s not just AIs that have this problem, as little glimpses into the characters’ lives will tell.
This book is as far from angry as you can get. It is full of love and emotion, and an endearing loyalty. More please!
Review copy provided by publisher.
While there is an overarching story that ties all the character plots together, the main attraction here are the individual character stories, which in my opinion are highly engrossing. Basically, this is The Canterbury Tales in space.
