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A review by skywhales
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
3.0
3 stars feels too low and 4 stars feels too high so pretend i rated this 3.5. we good? good.
so going into this i knew it was more character-focused than plot-focused, and i was okay with that! i thought that was cool with me. i don't mind talky books if they're well-written and keep me engaged. and this book is, at times, a little pushy about its messages of friendship and found family, in a way where i sort of felt like they were getting shoved in my face, but i really loved the different alien species and worlds we got to see and i've forgiven much worse books their much worse faults if they have cool worldbuilding. (the worldbuilding in ready player one was like the only thing i liked about it.)
as people have said, the characters were a little one-note at times. it took me a long time to come around to rosemary. i play a lot of visual novels and dating sims and the like (they're a guilty pleasure) and the best way i can describe rosemary's personality is. like. a visual novel main character of a protagonist. she's friendly and smart and pretty but relatively naive and just goes along with whatever her friends are doing because she likes to be included. and everyone accepts her right away and thinks she's so awesome and cool and great when she doesn't...DO that much for a while. i came around to her by the end but for the first 3/4 of the book i thought she was boring.
the main reason i took off stars for a book that was still overall an enjoyable reading experience is that the 'diversity' in this book--at times--felt more like a well-meaning liberal's idea of diversity than just something that naturally occurs. again, it's obvious the author is trying, and the aliens having various different sex differences was neat, but between the strange pronouns stuff and the fact that no human characters seemed to have any sort of complex relationship with gender, i didn't really feel all that included.
but this wasn't a BAD book. it's something i'd read again, and while all the fluffy friendship occasionally toed the line between cloying and cozy, sometimes you need a comfort read or two around. and this does a fine job of that.
so going into this i knew it was more character-focused than plot-focused, and i was okay with that! i thought that was cool with me. i don't mind talky books if they're well-written and keep me engaged. and this book is, at times, a little pushy about its messages of friendship and found family, in a way where i sort of felt like they were getting shoved in my face, but i really loved the different alien species and worlds we got to see and i've forgiven much worse books their much worse faults if they have cool worldbuilding. (the worldbuilding in ready player one was like the only thing i liked about it.)
as people have said, the characters were a little one-note at times. it took me a long time to come around to rosemary. i play a lot of visual novels and dating sims and the like (they're a guilty pleasure) and the best way i can describe rosemary's personality is. like. a visual novel main character of a protagonist. she's friendly and smart and pretty but relatively naive and just goes along with whatever her friends are doing because she likes to be included. and everyone accepts her right away and thinks she's so awesome and cool and great when she doesn't...DO that much for a while. i came around to her by the end but for the first 3/4 of the book i thought she was boring.
the main reason i took off stars for a book that was still overall an enjoyable reading experience is that the 'diversity' in this book--at times--felt more like a well-meaning liberal's idea of diversity than just something that naturally occurs.
Spoiler
coming up with fantasy/sci-fi slurs for species is always something that feels Weird to me, and the fact that they forgave a character for constantly perpetuating species stereotypes throughout the book as soon as he started having his character arc struck me as weird too, especially when we never really got a reason for why he acted like that. the thing that actually pissed me off was the really weird treatment around the pronouns they/them. they were treated as plural pronouns throughout and the only character who used them once again started being referred to with he/him once the consciousness sharing his mind got expelled. there are other neutral pronouns used throughout, but the idea of they/them being used as pronouns for nonbinary people and people with unknown gender is common enough now that it feels weird that an otherwise inclusive book would act so weird about them.but this wasn't a BAD book. it's something i'd read again, and while all the fluffy friendship occasionally toed the line between cloying and cozy, sometimes you need a comfort read or two around. and this does a fine job of that.