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A review by millie
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
adventurous
lighthearted
relaxing
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
2/5 : it was ok.
i stumbled upon the long way to small, angry planet by becky chambers through recommendation, a lot of people loved this book and hyped it up for me, i was really excited when i was finally able to pick it up, sadly, this book (at least for me) didn't live up to my expectation nor to what it was supposed to be selling.
giving a rating to the long way to a small, angry planet was really difficult for me. i didn't want to be unfair to becky chambers since it was her very first published book and first books aren't always perfect, you know ? but giving it a higher rating wouldn't have been honest from me.
short version of the review : overall, the long way to a small, angry planet is a mind-numbing read, if you're into that : cool, you'll probably appreciate it more than me. very easy writing style, lovable enough characters and good enough worldbuilding. weak plot and weaker grasp on a lot of issues chambers want to adress.
long version of the review : the good things first,, i think this book has excellent worldbuilding, the science isn't always comprensible and probably boggus but unlike some other SF books, it doesnt shame you for not understanding : sciences/tech makes things work and that's enough. the characters were nice and lovable (at least for the first part of the story.) and i love a good character-driven plot.
but thats where the problem come in, for character-driven plot to work what you need is ... a plot. and that's what wayfarers lack horribly. i would describe this book as being episodic (at best!!), every chapters work good as standalone or as vaguely tied up to each other. if that's how the book was sold to me, i would have been fine and i certainly would not feel this disappointment because see, theres supposed to be a plot to wayfarers except it doesn't happen until the last chapters and it furiously rushed, beside chambers as the bad habits of telling us things and not like .... showing them. you are told that things happen but you never see them happen and it's something truly infuriating when you go through more than 400 pages.
so, the characters were fine and good, at least at first. the point of characters-driven plot is that characters are supposed to grow, evolve, change or idk. it doesn't happen here, except maybe rosemary but eh. the pov is always switching between characters and it's annoying at best because you never get to really know a character and thus never get attached to them. when halfways through the book, rosemary finally spills the beans about who she is, i couldn't have been more annoyed. i rolled my eyes, i wasn't attached to her nor to any characters really. and that's another of character-driven plot, right? you're supposed to care for them, right?
well i didn't care for any of them, not really.
corbin and ohan are good example of that. i will not get into details about it as to not spoil anyone but i think the corbin's storyline should have happened a lot of sooner and if not then it definitively should have had a bigger impact on the story and/or his relationship with the crew because well... as you guessed : it doesn't because corbin doesn't exist in the book unless it further the plot, that's why chambers has corbin do bad shit to people because it's convenient, he's a prick and it's an easy way out for the plot to have the prickly asshole do the bad deed so the lovable side of the crew don't have to do it despite the fact they also wanted to do the bad deed. lol.
ok now, let me adress the elephant in the room by saying that if you're reading this book because you were sold on the diversity (especially the lgbtq+ type of diversity) then literally people lied you. big fucking time. i guess the interspecie f/f is the only thing that was true but even that was sketchy and not developped well. And also, a thing that awfully, awfully bothered me was how .... you know .... all the genderfluid/trans/nonbinary characters are ... aliens and not only that but it's explained through absolutely painful biological science and it's not great, folks. because the thing about gender is to show that whatever we understand as biological sex isn't real and by trying to tie gender to biology, chambers shows she does not understand any of that. ohan only use they/them pronoun because they shares their body with a host of some sort. chambers is only making gender a alien thing and it's definitively a shit thing to do.
i don't even want to touch all the things regarding race because i hate fantasy racism and this review is already long enoug but if anyone made it all the way through here : it's shit, if i didn't already know that chambers was a white cis woman then i would have easily guessed she was one.
overall, i think becky chambers only had good intentions by adressing heavy issues like racism but it was badly, clumsily executed. a lot of it came out as more offensive than she probably intented as she lacked the tools to do so.
i stumbled upon the long way to small, angry planet by becky chambers through recommendation, a lot of people loved this book and hyped it up for me, i was really excited when i was finally able to pick it up, sadly, this book (at least for me) didn't live up to my expectation nor to what it was supposed to be selling.
giving a rating to the long way to a small, angry planet was really difficult for me. i didn't want to be unfair to becky chambers since it was her very first published book and first books aren't always perfect, you know ? but giving it a higher rating wouldn't have been honest from me.
short version of the review : overall, the long way to a small, angry planet is a mind-numbing read, if you're into that : cool, you'll probably appreciate it more than me. very easy writing style, lovable enough characters and good enough worldbuilding. weak plot and weaker grasp on a lot of issues chambers want to adress.
long version of the review : the good things first,, i think this book has excellent worldbuilding, the science isn't always comprensible and probably boggus but unlike some other SF books, it doesnt shame you for not understanding : sciences/tech makes things work and that's enough. the characters were nice and lovable (at least for the first part of the story.) and i love a good character-driven plot.
but thats where the problem come in, for character-driven plot to work what you need is ... a plot. and that's what wayfarers lack horribly. i would describe this book as being episodic (at best!!), every chapters work good as standalone or as vaguely tied up to each other. if that's how the book was sold to me, i would have been fine and i certainly would not feel this disappointment because see, theres supposed to be a plot to wayfarers except it doesn't happen until the last chapters and it furiously rushed, beside chambers as the bad habits of telling us things and not like .... showing them. you are told that things happen but you never see them happen and it's something truly infuriating when you go through more than 400 pages.
so, the characters were fine and good, at least at first. the point of characters-driven plot is that characters are supposed to grow, evolve, change or idk. it doesn't happen here, except maybe rosemary but eh. the pov is always switching between characters and it's annoying at best because you never get to really know a character and thus never get attached to them. when halfways through the book, rosemary finally spills the beans about who she is, i couldn't have been more annoyed. i rolled my eyes, i wasn't attached to her nor to any characters really. and that's another of character-driven plot, right? you're supposed to care for them, right?
well i didn't care for any of them, not really.
corbin and ohan are good example of that. i will not get into details about it as to not spoil anyone but i think the corbin's storyline should have happened a lot of sooner and if not then it definitively should have had a bigger impact on the story and/or his relationship with the crew because well... as you guessed : it doesn't because corbin doesn't exist in the book unless it further the plot, that's why chambers has corbin do bad shit to people because it's convenient, he's a prick and it's an easy way out for the plot to have the prickly asshole do the bad deed so the lovable side of the crew don't have to do it despite the fact they also wanted to do the bad deed. lol.
ok now, let me adress the elephant in the room by saying that if you're reading this book because you were sold on the diversity (especially the lgbtq+ type of diversity) then literally people lied you. big fucking time. i guess the interspecie f/f is the only thing that was true but even that was sketchy and not developped well. And also, a thing that awfully, awfully bothered me was how .... you know .... all the genderfluid/trans/nonbinary characters are ... aliens and not only that but it's explained through absolutely painful biological science and it's not great, folks. because the thing about gender is to show that whatever we understand as biological sex isn't real and by trying to tie gender to biology, chambers shows she does not understand any of that. ohan only use they/them pronoun because they shares their body with a host of some sort. chambers is only making gender a alien thing and it's definitively a shit thing to do.
i don't even want to touch all the things regarding race because i hate fantasy racism and this review is already long enoug but if anyone made it all the way through here : it's shit, if i didn't already know that chambers was a white cis woman then i would have easily guessed she was one.
overall, i think becky chambers only had good intentions by adressing heavy issues like racism but it was badly, clumsily executed. a lot of it came out as more offensive than she probably intented as she lacked the tools to do so.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders
there's some talk about war and characters talking about how it traumatized them.