The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers! <3 <3 <3

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I want everyone to read this book! I picked it up knowing nothing about it, I was in the book store and I happened upon a ridiculous looking sci fi book. I was in a silly mood, the book looked silly and fun so I picked it up.

Yeah, it was a tad silly – but mostly it was wonderful. I absolutely adore this book for so many reasons.

If I had been told this was a book with very little plot and was a page turner almost solely because of characters and relationships I may not have picked it up. What a mistake that would have been, I smiled the whole way through this book.

Need a pick me up, need a break from grim dark, do you like to feel warm and cozy and like you’re reading the adventures of your friends? Pick this up, seriously.

Okay, on to what the book is actually about.

A woman is assigned to a deep space mission where her ship punches holes in space time to create tunnels for larger ships to pass through safely. Overall, the plot was okay even though it was light.

The world building was also very well done, it wasn’t overwhelming, there are no info dumps – but it’s consistent and it makes sense. Becky has done a few AMA’s or just showing up on reddit and discussing her book and such a lovely person as well. Her parents are both in the science field professionally and I think that may have had an impact on her writing – as someone who’s working in a science field myself I was impressed with her imagination for what may be coming for us in space. It didn’t seem like she was reaching for things that will probably never  happen, and so the reader was easily immersed into the world that feels believable and consistent.

The characters are all likeable, even the grumpy asshole grew on me as I continued through the book. The main character was easy to relate to and easy to like – but I think my favorite character is Sissix, who’s a side character but she has a lot of screen time. She’s a reptilian humanoid alien and she’s just amazing. I have a love for reptiles and I’ve had many snakes, lizards and turtles over the years. There’s a scene where Sissix goes through a shed, and she’s so grumpy and irritable because she’s just so deeply uncomfortable, her skin is crawling and feel like it’s on fire (it was a funny scene though, it wasn’t anything traumatic). It tickled me so much to see what it may be like for my snake, Julius Squeezer, goes through when he sheds. The imagination that went into this book was incredible.

Eventually the name of the book makes sense when a new species is discovered near the center of tha galaxy – they are a very strange race that’s a little hard to get along with. Their ship is assigned to make the tunnels to this new planet and hopefully help make relations with this newly discovered species.

I love this book so much, and what’s even more incredible is that it’s a debut novel.

The second book was even better – I didn’t think that was a thing that could be possible, but it is! A review will be going up on A Closed and Common Orbit soon!

<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3 This book

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