Review | Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

358 pages | Sci-Fi | 2018 | 2/5☆

This won’t be a long one. I feel like everything I have to say about Becky Chambers I’ve said before.

Her characters are (mostly) complex and interesting – or at least their work is. Isabel the archivist, with her alien guest, and Eyas the caretaker, who deals with the Exodan dead, were both fascinating; probably because it was through these characters Chambers did most of her world-building. The other characters we follow are considerably less gripping: Sawyer, the newcomer and immediate outsider, teenage Kip and Exodan mother Tessa are little more than tropes. A teenager struggling with peer pressure and growing up? A newcomer failing to assimilate? A woman trying to raise her kids while her partner is away? I wouldn’t mind if Chambers had added something to these stories but… she didn’t.

Her world-building is still phenomenal. In Record of a Spaceborn Few, Chambers introduces new cultures, traditions and mentalities. She creates interesting but understandable customs, close to but still alien enough from our own. She also manages to seemlessly introduce the reader to the world she’s created on board the Exodan Fleet. Having a character like Ghuh’loloan, the alien guest of Isabel’s, gives the reader the chance to assimilate with her.

The world-building and characters are what keep me coming back to Chambers’ books, but they desperately need more danger. Tension. Action. The most cataclysmic event in this book is in its introduction. I love the wholesomeness of the Wayfarer series, but not at the cost of any real drama at all.

“‘Knowledge should always be free,’ she said. ‘What people do with it is up to them.'”
Becky Chambers, Record of a Spaceborn Few, p.228.

Review | The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

402 pages | Sci-Fi/Fantasy | 2014 | 4/5☆

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet isn’t a book about grand interstellar fights. Its stakes don’t feel huge. It’s not a book where the forces of good and evil battle it out on every page. Instead, this heartwarming, feel-good novel focuses almost entirely on its characters.

In Becky Chambers’ debut novel, we travel alongside Rosemary Harper to far-off corners of the galaxy as she adjusts to life aboard the Wayfarer, a patched-up ship with a diverse crew. It’s a character-driven story that explores gender, race, politics and sexuality. It also has some genuinely phenomenal world-building. It asks: what does it mean to be human – or alien – in a universe full of chaos?

The novel concerns itself with character development far more than it does adventure. This is, by no means, a bad thing – especially when its characters prove to be as interesting as they are. The multi-species crew includes characters like: Sissix, an exotic reptilian pilot; friendly engineers Kizzy and Jenks; the reclusive algaeist Corbin and their captain Ashby, who grew up on the Exodus Fleet – a space-bound community of humans. That’s right – even the differing human cultures are interesting. All of the main characters are well-written and develop over the course of the novel. The female characters are interesting and varied too; even those only mentioned in passing are out in the universe, acting as agents of their own destiny. It feels like Firefly (but better, because it has nothing to do with Joss Whedon).

This book is so, so wholesome. It’s light-hearted science fiction; the novel’s main focus is essentially exploring the meaning of ‘family’. Don’t get me wrong, bad things happen. Injustice exists. But the universe is mostly a good place. It’s less sexist, racist, homophobic and transphobic than our world. It’s quite nice to escape there for a bit. That said, it’s not afraid to tackle issues like colonialism, xenophobia and racism, deliberately demonstrating that just because something is new to you or you don’t understand it, that does not mean that it’s wrong. This book provides a thoughtful commentary on existence, but its overall message is one of hope.

“The truth is, Rosemary, that you are capable of anything. Good or bad. You always have been, and you always will be. Given the right push, you, too, could do horrible things. That darkness exists within all of us.”
Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, p.213.