Wayfarers Series 4 Books Collection Set by Becky Chambers (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit, Record of a Spaceborn Few & To Be Taught, If Fortunate)

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Similarly, it seemed weird to me that all of the characters' thoughts and felt in similar way (even if Aeluons express themselves through the colors in their cheeks). Why do they all feel the same type of emotions? That they all spoke as if they were therapists made them blur together in spite of their alleged differences.

Overall though, The Long Way... really isn’t compelling reading. Chamber’s book feels very much like a gentle Young Adult novel about friendship and acceptance, rather than the Space Opera it is billed as. Ohan - Sianat Pair and the navigator of the Wayfarer. They help Sissix and keep to themselves for the most part. But the end of this story really blew me away involving them. Instead of jumping from space battle to alien invasion to badass antagonist dialogue explaining his genocidal plans etc, Chambers shows peaceful clashes and culminations of alien species and ideologies, creating new, amazing, indirect insights into the dysfunctionalities and illogicality of human culture, tradition, and faith.

There aren’t any humans in this story, and it feels like a perfect choice to end the series, especially as book three, Record of a Spaceborn Few, was all about humans. It brings perspective to the universe and while reminding the reader of how tiny each of us is in the grand scheme of things, it’s also fascinating to realise how relatable these characters are. One might argue that Chambers failed to make them diverse enough, considering they’re all different species, but I like the idea of common emotions and reactions regardless of how dissimilar they are in other respects. Their bonding over their shared confusion as to humans’ love of cheese is probably the funniest scene of the book. I loved two books by Chambers - the first Wayfarers book (which I plan to never reread lest I figure out that it doesn’t hold up on reread by my inner grumpy cynic) and To Be Taught If Fortunate which was like Cousteau Odyssey on alien planets. But apparently I need plot or a nature documentary feel. This one has neither. All it has is kumbaya in spades. Or in space. Or maybe kombucha. (I kid. I’m partial to kombucha myself. I’d never talk crap about it). Jenks - A technician on the Wayfarer. I will say I think the moment I fell in love with this book was when Jenks asked Lovey, “What kind of body do you want to have?” One of my biggest pet peeves in all of literature is when authors give AIs genders. And seeing Lovey decide what she wanted to be… friends, I don’t have words for how beautiful it is. You all know that I’m pansexual, so maybe I’m stretching here, but I think Jenks is my new pansexual hero, by the way. A good book, but not a gripping one. At the moment, I'm giving it a 3.5 star rating, and wobbling between rounding up or down. Not her best work, and I wouldn't start here -- though it is a standalone. Another of her trademark "found family" stories, this one recycles old stories of travelers stranded in a temporary refuge, while a natural disaster is sorted out. As you will see, there is a large range of reactions to the book. But the average rating for all readers is a solid, near-masterpiece 4.5 stars. I'm definitely not going that high! Again, a commonly seen sci-fi trope is described from a new, fascinating perspective of which no other author had the ingenuity to see the potential.

Chambers delicately pulls at this thread in each book, even though every installment features a new cast (with some minor crossover in most cases). Captain Ashby aims to bring his tunneling crew’s morale to an all-time high while he juggles a difficult, long-distance interspecies relationship in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. A Closed and Common Orbit sees an AI grapple with her identity when she is thrust into an unfamiliar and legitimately illegal form. Each book brings new philosophical questions to the table, and Chambers is as content to offer possible answers as she is to let those questions linger.Locus Awards Finalists". Locus. 7 May 2019. Archived from the original on 22 June 2022 . Retrieved 17 July 2022.

Shortlist Announced". The Arthur C. Clarke Award. Archived from the original on 10 July 2018 . Retrieved 12 July 2022. a b "Announcing the 2022 Hugo Award Winners". Tor.com. 4 September 2022. Archived from the original on 5 September 2022 . Retrieved 9 September 2022.This is just one example of the incredibly diverse cast of aliens that populate the Wayfarers books, which share a universe but mostly stand alone. There are Aeluons, who communicate by flashing colours on their faces, and the reptilian Aandrisk, whose society is influenced by the fact they lay eggs – children are normally the result of casual sex, and aren’t reared by their biological parents. Most of the scenes included in the narrative seemed to try hard to be cute or sweet or heartwarming but I found them unbearably cheesy. And on the topic of cheese, that whole discussion about how weird cheese is was so necessary, the same goes for that discussion on shoes (they are like clothes for feet, ahah, so funny). Given that they have all interacted with or have knowledge of other species it seemed weird that they would go on about cheese and shoes as if these are flabbergasting concepts. And then, there are other books, like Ancestral night, also a female SciFi author, that have the character driven emotionally insightful story that Chambers so excels at, but that also put serious research into getting the hard science right, in a way that is a delight to read, from emerging ships out of superluminal travel being particle cannons, to how confused researchers are still about gravity, to sensible spaceship design, to time lag when communicating with large minds. There are so many combinations of fresh ideas that come to mind while reminiscing about the brilliance of this novel and how many uses there may be found in future social Sci-Fi novels. I haven´t read much social Sci-Fi for the simple reason that´s it´s even more underrated than conventional Sci-Fi and that there aren´t enough meta rating scores to make sure that it are good reads and not average or strange and even bad ones. Sorry, I am not altruistic enough to risk reading something bad to find pearls, shall others risk their lifetime.