The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers, 443 pages

Rosemary has begun a new job as a clerk aboard the long-haul tunneling ship the Wayfarer, under Captain Ashby Santoso. As the ship makes a year-long voyage to the planet Hedra Ka to open up a new wormhole connecting the aforementioned small, angry planet to the rest of the Galactic Commons, Rosemary and her new crew bond through assorted adventures and misadventures.

This book is everything one could want out of a science fiction novel. Strongly grounded in rich, varied, internally consistent worldbuilding (that never wastes too much time focusing on specifics of how exactly an interplanar bore, an artigrav field, or algae-based spaceship fuel operates), The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet treats this drawn-out voyage not as a thrilling adventure full of swashbuckling action (in fact, Ashby and Rosemary, like almost all humans, are committed pacifists, which nearly ends poorly when they are boarded by space pirates), but a measured, thoughtful, kind reflection on what it means to be a family. The two mech-techs, Kizzy and Jenks, and their relationship with the ship’s AI, Lovey; the pilot Sissix and her natural Aandrisk need to express affection; even the algaeist Corbin and his distaste for the camaraderie the rest of the crew share: every member of the ensemble cast of this novel grows and learns and has their own character arc. Just like The Best of All Possible Worlds, each chapter is a semi-independent episode in the life of the crew of the Wayfarer, but Chambers absolutely nails the pacing. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet never feels rushed or choppy, but builds slowly and steadily to a deeply satisfying conclusion.