Wayfarers Series 4 Books Collection Set by Becky Chambers (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit, Record of a Spaceborn Few & To Be Taught, If Fortunate)

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Overall though, The Long Way... really isn’t compelling reading. Chamber’s book feels very much like a gentle Young Adult novel about friendship and acceptance, rather than the Space Opera it is billed as. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within – just like all the other books in the Wayfarers series – has been like a lovely and heart-warming hug.

World building is a strong gift for Chambers and, like many Le Guin novels, this reads like a sociological exploration of a galaxy via a cozy narrative. It is incredibly well constructed and while she throws a multitude of in-world terms at you, she excels at putting them in contexts for you to learn them without having to explain them. By the end of the book what sounds like gibberish to an outsider is perfectly understandable to the reader. It is accomplished without much exposition either, having passages that are “historical texts” or essays that provide context and much of the explaining is done via conversations between regular people in the ways regular people would talk about events. It allows you to experience and learn on the ground level instead of being lectured, and it really works. You feel like you exist in their world, its quite impressive. My library ebook copy lets me copy snippets for quotes. So here's Ouloo, a Laru (you can tell from the vowel-heavy name), manager of Gora's Five-Hop One-Stop, trying to get ready for a day at work. There are complications: Pei is in a relationship with Ashby, the Human captain from The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, which they have to keep a secret because Aeluons have a strong taboo against interspecies romance. Pei’s internal struggle between not wanting to keep this secret any longer but also not wanting to damage her career by telling everyone the truth was very similar to the internal struggle I went through when I was in the closet. Not for the first time reading one of Chambers’ books, I felt seen. My favourite character in the book is the charming and tragic Dr Chef (yes, he is the ship’s doctor and chef), one of the last of an alien species called Grum, which resemble a kind of six-limbed otter and gradually change biological sex over their lifetime.Awards". The Kitschies. 29 June 2022. Archived from the original on 3 April 2022 . Retrieved 29 June 2022. Tupo was still so soft, so babylike in temperament, but had finally crossed the threshold from small and cute to big and dumb." Also, please know that there is no semblance of a review that I could write that would do this book even a percent of justice or let you know even an ounce of how much it impacted me. But I’m going to try my best, because this book deserves nothing less.

Lovelace isn’t particularly happy about her new situation. She neither understands nor wants her new body, and she would rather return to what she was before. Baileys women's prize for fiction longlist". Women's Prize for Fiction. Archived from the original on 3 July 2021 . Retrieved 12 July 2022. PALMARÈS OFFICIEL DE LA 18E ÉDITION DES UTOPIALES" (PDF). Les Utopiales. Archived (PDF) from the original on 22 October 2021 . Retrieved 17 September 2022.

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Content and trigger warnings for murder, death, loss of a loved one, PTSD depiction, grief depiction, blood depiction, and general war themes. Lovelace was once merely a ship's artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in a new body, following a total system shut-down and reboot, she has to start over, in a world where her kind are illegal. She's never felt so alone. But she's not alone, not really. Pepper, one of the engineers who risked life and limb to reinstall Lovelace, is determined to help her adjust to her new world. Because Pepper knows a thing or two about starting over.

The story follows Pei, an Aeluon, Speaker, an Akarak, and Roveg, a Quelin. They all end up grounded at the Five-Hop One-Stop which is run by Ouloo, a Laru. They have all lead distinctive lives and they also necessitate differentiating things given that they belong to a different species. Oxygen, for example, would be lethal to Speaker. At first, they view the others as mere aliens but the more time they spend together—picnics and get-togethers—the more they begin to see the others as individuals in their own right. There is some conflict due to Akarak not being considered a sapient species and therefore they are not part of the GC. They were colonized by another species and are now regarded with distrust. Pei is fighting for the Aeluons against the Rosk (whom, if I record correctly, they had previously colonized). I also liked the setting in which the topics where explored. I mean, what do you do if you can’t just walk away? If you can’t just call emergency services in case of an actual emergency? When you’re stranded and shut in? A compelling departure from any of sci-fi’s typical subgenres, Wayfarers plants humanity into a multi-species society far in the future and says “Go.” The four loosely-connected books contained within the series follow characters from myriad species and communities as they come to terms with their senses of identity and try to find their place in that endless universe. Chambers’ thoughtful, distinctive brand of science fiction makes Wayfarers a perfect choice for a limited streaming series. The Story So Far One of my favorite things in all of literature is reading about found families and having that be a pivotal aspect to a story. Friends, I feel bad praising any other book before this one, because this is the found family of my soul. I have never read a book with a better found family in my entire life, and I don’t think I ever will.

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

This series has a depth of emotional and social intelligence and empathy that is inspiring, moving, genuinely brilliant, that really transformed SciFi. Little plot, but really excellent character development and relations. There's some cool, if familiar stuff here - The Long Way... is set in a Mass Effect-like society of aliens where humanity is very much a bit player. The Bioware similarities also extend to a human-AI relationship, where the human suffers from a physical condition (Dwarfism), much like Joker and EDI in the Mass Effect games. The worldbuilding is good, and Chamber’s characters are very diverse, if not very interesting. In an adaptation, viewers could be treated to all the things that make the books special, plus visual imaginings of the various species we encounter as readers. These characters have the capacity to make us reflect on our own humanity just as they do for the human characters in the book.

I mention all this to assure you that Wayfarers is indeed worth the read, from beginning to end. If I can’t convince you, maybe Chambers’ multiple Hugo Awards can. I also say it to soften the blow, here, when I admit that an adaptation of the series seems highly unlikely (at least at the moment).Moreover, there were some nods to the other books and a strong bond with the first that had me laugh in delight (including a serious "d’aw"-moment). :D This book is a sequel to ‘The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet’. However, it was written as a standalone novel and can be read as such. Similarly, it seemed weird to me that all of the characters' thoughts and felt in similar way (even if Aeluons express themselves through the colors in their cheeks). Why do they all feel the same type of emotions? That they all spoke as if they were therapists made them blur together in spite of their alleged differences. Lovely and heartwarming, but I must be a heartless soulless cynic. Since for me this ended up being an equivalent of literary overload on cotton candy - pleasant but unsatisfying, and leading to sweetness-induced tooth decay. (Hmmm, is that why this book is a bit toothless?)