Paperback, 404 pages
English language
Published Aug. 6, 2015 by Hodder & Stoughton.
When Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer, she isn't expecting much. The Wayfarer, a patched-up ship that's seen better days, offers her everything she could possibly want: a small, quiet spot to call home for a while, adventure in far-off corners of the galaxy, and distance from her troubled past. But Rosemary gets more than she bargained for with the Wayfarer. The crew is a mishmash of species and personalities, from Sissix, the friendly reptilian pilot, to Kizzy and Jenks, the constantly sparring engineers who keep the ship running. Life on board is chaotic, but more or less peaceful - exactly what Rosemary wants. Until the crew are offered the job of a lifetime: the chance to build a hyperspace tunnel to a distant planet.
Je moet er een beetje van houden denk ik, het is een beetje fluffy en lief met allemaal aardige mensen die het beste met elkaar voor hebben. De Grote Geheimen waar het in de flaptekst over gaat zijn niet heel erg wereldschokkend, en zelfs de (weinige) slechteriken zijn grotendeels niet echt slecht. Niet echt een nagelbijter dus. Maar ach, het is bijna kerst, en we kunnen wel wat woke feelgood gebruiken in de wereld.
Enjoyed the weirdness of the worldbuilding, loved the relationshis and interactive, just liked the characters. I needed to get used to the slow pacing but enjoyed it in the end.
Start here and you will never turn back!
You get to know the whole crew on the journey; they are friends of yours by the end.
An utterly charming story. If you enjoy spaceships full of goobers, you'll love this.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is feel-good science fiction, in some ways a rarity. It's a story set in post-apocalyptic future, after mankind managed to dig its way out of the destroyed Earth, but there's nothing apocalyptic about the story itself.
The Wayfarer is a tunneling ship, a spaceship used to create stable wormholes to enable faster than light travel between faraway places. The main plot involves creating a passageway to manage contact with a previously isolated civilization.
The plot, though, is a side issue. The book is really a description of a journey of friends - the crew of the Wayfarer - who meet new people and visit new places. Most of the book is about more or less mundane, everyday things, so even if every chapter has a defined date, it's actually hard to follow the journey.
There are plenty of aliens in the Wayfarers …
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is feel-good science fiction, in some ways a rarity. It's a story set in post-apocalyptic future, after mankind managed to dig its way out of the destroyed Earth, but there's nothing apocalyptic about the story itself.
The Wayfarer is a tunneling ship, a spaceship used to create stable wormholes to enable faster than light travel between faraway places. The main plot involves creating a passageway to manage contact with a previously isolated civilization.
The plot, though, is a side issue. The book is really a description of a journey of friends - the crew of the Wayfarer - who meet new people and visit new places. Most of the book is about more or less mundane, everyday things, so even if every chapter has a defined date, it's actually hard to follow the journey.
There are plenty of aliens in the Wayfarers universe, and it's nice to see they are different - some of them are humanoid, some are something else. Different species have clearly different modes of communication and different social norms. The species could be more complete, though; most of the species have their appearance described, but the norms and peculiarities are often also just descriptions - they are not really a part of the story, just something thrown in.
Social norms also present the author with means for social commentary, and in places that becomes a bit tedious; I heartily approve of the message of acceptance, but the way it is delivered - and the way it so obviously mirrors current events - is a bit heavy handed in places.
Having said that, I still enjoyed the book and I'm definitely going to read the sequel.
