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��The universe is what we make of it. It’s up to you to decide what part you will play.��

This book left me speechless, and with some tears. I love this book with my whole heart. I imagine reading A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, the debut novel from Becky Chambers, to be what it is to a dog when they get a really good belly rub. You know, the kind where their leg is twitching and it just seems like pure bliss. Who hasn’t fantasized themselves in some fantastic future world, soaring amongst the stars with a headful of heroics? I spent many days as a kid wishing I could be part of these epic adventures. Chambers, offers such an opportunity aboard the ship The Wayfarer. The novel is practically an immersive experience in a sci-fi galaxy so well constructed and narrated that it feels very lived-in, and by the novels end you feel as if you are a part of the crew, having spent so much time amongst the endlessly lovable cast of characters. This is enhanced as, while most sci-fi epics put us with the elite heroes, the chosen few upon which the fate of a galaxy rests, Chambers lets us see how the average citizen of their Galactic Commons lives, loves, works and dreams. ��The people we remember are the ones who decided how our maps should be drawn. Nobody remembers who built the roads,�� yet Chambers creates a blissful drama full of life aboard a ship that does just that: builds “roads�� between planets across space. Often described as “cozy sci-fi”—an apt description if there is any—this first book of the Wayfarers plunges us into an exciting cosmos to live amongst the regular folks and look at how a universe of multiple species would feasibly coexist and is an excellent exploration on themes of cooperation, plurality, friendship, and identity while also a condemnation of war and power. In short, this book is a universe unto itself.

In epic space films we often see entire ships or planets destroyed and just move along, death on such a large scale it becomes that Stalin quote about one death a tragedy, a million a statistic. Long Way to a Small Angry Planet zooms in to the individual level and shows how for the regular person caught up in these cosmic struggles just a single death could be a universe of grief. It brings us to the level of what goes on with the Red Shirts in Star Trek, the transport crews in Star Wars, the regular staff in Dune, a crew full of non-combatants just trying to live their life in the universe. I love this crew. I can’t help it after feeling their kinship, engaging with their struggles, and watching them learn and love with each other. We are brought aboard the Wayfarer along with Rosemary, a young woman with a new identity fleeing a mysterious past and welcomed in to their crew. I’d tell you about them all, but I’d rather you get to meet them for yourselves. It’s been a few days since I finished the book and I rather miss them, so say hello for me.

��Perhaps the ache of homesickness was a fair price to pay for having so many good people in her life.��

What really grabs me about this book is the emphasis on how to make the universe work, even just aboard a ship staffed by a variety of different species. Details like Aandrisk-friendly cups to accommodate a lack of lips or other alterations and safety procedures for ease of access on ships for certain species, discussions on cultural or species differences or examples of interspecies frustrations due to them, and even a sort of sci-fi racism is present (the term “lizard�� is a massive slur). Working a DEI committee for a library and often thinking on accommodation and equity I really enjoyed how much attention to these ideas Chambers includes as a brilliant way of making the world feel real and lived-in. Communication is key to much of this, such as language barriers and attempting to ��not judge other species by your own social norms,�� even a interesting discussion on how the human language is biased against reptilian species (‘cold blooded�� having negative connotations, etc).

��Feelings are relative. And at the root, they’re all the same, even if they grow from different experiences and exist on different scales.��

This applies to cultural aspects too, and Chambers includes exceptional drama with trying to decide the “right�� thing to do when there is a clash in cultural beliefs. ��This is so fucking Human of you,�� Captain Ashby is told at a critical moment, ��Lie back and let the galaxy do whatever it wants, because you’re too guilty about how badly you fucked up your own species to ever take the initiative.’There are interesting discussions, such as Sissix finding it strange humans view a baby dying as more tragic than an adult (a baby has not accomplished anything while an adult has and has knowledge that could be passed on is the Aandrisk perspective), there is a species that finds taking anything more than you need to be not only wasteful but immoral, and the variations of sexuality and family structures is fascinating (Aandrisks have a “hatch-family�� and a “feather-family�� for instance, with the chosen family being more important than biological). It all makes for a great commentary on our own times and the need to accommodate plurality, something that is under political attack in the US from which Chambers wrote this novel. It is in the novel as well, with the uneasy alliance with the Toremi—a warmongering species thats inclusion into the Galactic Commons (GC) drives the main plot points—further frustrated by their rejection of plurality and belief in full consensus (they see the universe is complex patterns but reject multiple interpretations being allowed to co-exist).

��You Humans really do cripple yourselves with your belief that you all think in unique ways.��

I enjoyed how it is mentioned Corbin, who is white, is a rarity and almost all humans are people of color which feels akin to the sci-fi futures of Ursula K. Le Guin who usually applies a wide racial cast and her lack of white people in the future is because ��why wouldn’t they still be either a minority, or just swallowed up in the larger colored gene pool, in the future?.�� That is certainly present here, with other nods to Le Guin including the nod to the galactic communication device being called the “ansible,�� a tech from her books. The humans here have come from our Earth, which is now unlivable due to human destruction and wars (I enjoyed the digs at cults like the highly xenophobic Gaiaists wanted to abandon the galaxy and return to Earth or the Survivalists who reject technology or vaccines wanting a human surpremacist society) but in this future amongst the stars they are fairly mediocre and not exactly highly respected. They are viewed as too emotional, weak and fragile, and there is a comedic moment when characters playing an old human game (chess) joke at how human games used to be about conquest but in the present the idea of humans being conquerors is laughable. ��The only reason Humans stopped killing each other to the extent that you used to, I think, is because your planet died before you could finish the job,�� we are told. It is a good warning in a book largely about cooperation.

��No good can come from a species at war with itself,�� Chambers writes, and this hits at a major theme in the novel. We have the humans, but also the tragic history of the Grum and why they are going extinct after years of developing more and more lethal technology to kill each other in horrific fashion in their wars. There is an excellent political narrative in this book and while it mostly exists in the background, the repercussions of it constantly arise and often harm the regular people just doing their jobs and living their lives despite it being so much larger and beyond them. ��The thing is, a lot of laws are stupid, too, and they don't always keep people out of danger,�� we are told, and often we see how the politics of the galaxy is far more about feeding the powerful than protecting the people. Ownership of resources drives much of the politics and becomes an excellent commentary on our own global politics as it is the future’s politics. A rich person selling weapons to both sides of a war for personal gain (a narrative threaded through the newscasts) is decried as wrong and punished, but a government doing the same thing is “business as usual�� and rewarded with power. And people die for these power struggles while being hardly a blip on the news.

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.

The book is also rather episodic while following a fairly basic narrative forward, giving you cool windows of insight to the galaxy through short, contained narratives inside the larger one. This is a very character driven story and one in which discovering or being true to your identity while also being part of the larger world is a major theme. This can be tricky in a dangerous universe full of corruption.

��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.��

It is also about rising above all that, and doing the right thing. It is about exploring what it means to live and feel and coexist. Things are frightening but ��scared means we want to live,�� as Kizzy says, and pushing on despite fear and struggles is key to being alive. What really drives the point home in a cool way is how two of the moments that most humanize the characters involves characters not considered “people�� in the galaxy (like a clone, or an AI), and the biggest moment of grief allows for a tragic but beautiful look at love in a sci-fi future.

��A black hole is a perfect place to contemplate death.��

Honestly I could go on and on about this book forever. It isn’t one for everyone, and if action or a strong plot is what you seek, perhaps look elsewhere. But for a gorgeous, lived-in universe full of fascinating characters and a look at how that would feasibly work, this is an absolute gem. It’s cozy, its comforting, its often hilarious and touching, but it also critiques society, war and the power structures that make war and societal suffering happen. We see how the average person is so small and fragile against the scope of political struggles of the rich and we see how it is the average person that becomes expendable pawns in their games. But most of all, we see how being alive is a joy when you can share it with others, even sharing pain and fear, and great things can happen when we try to work together. Love is the message here, and we have interspecies romantic love and familial love, both of which are necessary and good. It’s so charming. A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet was a burst of sunshine in my life, and I hated finishing it because I just want to sail the stars with that crew. Come aboard, there is much to see.

5/5

��You're Rosemary Harper. You chose that name because the old one didn't fit anymore. So you had to break a few laws to de it. Big fucking deal. Life isn't fair, and laws usually aren't, either. You did what you had to do.��