Book review || The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

I read it because someone on Tumblr told me to lmao. It took me a about a week and a half to read. The genre is Sci-Fi and it was published in 2014. I did not pirate it, you can't prove anything.

Favorite characters in most to least favorite: Ashby, Jenks, Rosemary, Kizzy, Sissix, Dr. Chef, Ohan, Lovey, Corbin.

All you can do, Rosemary — all any of us can do — is work to be something positive instead. That is a choice that every sapient must make every day of their life. The universe is what we make of it. It’s up to you to decide what part you will play.

- Dentbots scare me, I feel like that'd be a very not good sensory experience. But! the opportunities for accessibility products built off of that concept are very large (obvs not irl).

- Everything clicks together. A few times I was like "how does this fit into the plot??" and by the end everything was just like, perfectly tied together. Really talented writing.

- Hey it's me 🫵 Ash(by) give me back my name.

- "Humans destroy the planet so hard that they find out aliens are real, escape to space, and the majority of them become pacifists" is now my political daydream.

- I don't actually hate any of the main characters!! This makes it difficult to find a favorite lmao.

- I rarely like romance, especially cishet romance, but Ashby and Pei are very fun together.

- It has a lot of similarities with Runaway To The Stars, I can see why they'd both be loved be the same person.

- It's difficult to enjoy Sci-Fi featuring A.I. when the thing we have that's called A.I. is devastating in every way, but the way the A.I.s function in the book are cool and I did cry when Lovey died.

- It's kind of annoying how often Ashby is pushed to just completely drop his morals (like when everyone really wanted a gun), however there are situations (like when Corbin cured Ohan) that he really should've just dropped them.

- I was expecting Rosemary to be trans? She gives very trans vibes, the entire time she was like "they can't find out about my past" I thought that was because she didn't want them to realize she's trans. I mean come on "I secretly changed my name and had to cut off all connections to my past" you can't tell me that isn't trans-coded.

- Kizzy is aromantic, you can't convince me otherwise. "Lovers are stupid, my close friend means a million times more to me than anyone else could" I Know What You Are.

- Queer platonic lesbians!!!! Everyone say we love you queer platonic lesbians. Rosemary and Sissix make me so so happy. We neeeed more queer platonic stories I love them I love them.

- So many world building, I can't get over how well thought out it is. The excerpts from in universe books are really cool and using that to show the spectrum of viewpoints is so smart??

- Someone recently told me (prompted by me being very confused by book two) that each book is a different set of characters, which makes me have different feelings about the ending. It's so clearly not the end?? I was excited to read more about Pei and Ashby's relationship developing and her coming on the ship again. I was excited to see how all the characters deal with the guilt and grief over Lovey's death. I was excited to see how Ohan adjusts to being just Ohan. I was excited to see how Corbin becomes a genuine member of the crew. The ending left so much open, it feels like the only explanation could be that it's part of a book series, but the book series called the Wayfarers only actually has the Wayfarer crew in the first book. This makes no sense???

- The Aandrisk need for physical contact is understandable, but it's upsetting the way the sex side of that is written. Rosemary and Sissix are cute, I really do love them, but the fact that the start of it is poised as "adapting to her culture" makes it feel gross. Maybe I'm just too asexual to appreciate sex being so intricate to your life that it's depressing to live without it but just go jerk off I promise you'll survive.

- The idea of xe/xyr as the default gender neutral pronouns is actually so fucking cool.

- The logic the Sianat Pairs use to say that other species are incapable of understanding the secrets of the universe is eerily similar to the way cis men say that females could never understand science the proper way. Lots of possible metaphors there.

- Woohooo character development I love seeing assholes heal and become better people thank you Corbin.