I loved this book for the same reason I loved The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. The world building that is so well thought out that everything seems obvious, though it’s very different to our own world. It’s a world that is lived in by multiple alien species, all of which are very original but still entirely believable. But all of this—a finely wrought world and the aliens that inhabit it—is merely background to the characters that live in this world and the relationships between them.

This novel explores what it means to be a person through the lens of two AIs. Each is slowly shown to be a person in their own right. Chambers is so effective at this that she had me near tears toward the end of the novel.

I really can’t recommend the Wayfarers novels enough.