sawyl | The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

Becky Chamber's science fiction novel The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, has been gathering plaudits for quite a while now. I'm pleased to be able to report that it's every bit as enjoyable and charming as everyone says it is.

The book opens with Rosemary Harper joining the crew of the tunnelling ship Wayfarer as its new administrator. Thanks in part to her arrival and the consequent improvement in the ship's compliance with the endless bureaucratic regulations surrounding the creation of transit paths through space, Captain Ashby Santoso is contracted by the Galactic Commons to create a new tunnel from Central Space to Hedra Ka — the small, angry planet of the title. Thanks to the physics of the universe, the Wayfarer can't simply punch through to the planet from Central Space but instead must spend the best part of a year travelling to Toremi Ka space to create the tunnel from the other hed.

On the long journey to Hedra Ka, we come to know the Wayfarer and its idiosyncratic crew. We've got dedicated captain Ashby Santoso and his convert relationship with Pei, a Aeluon whose people are opposed to relationships with aliens. We've got newbie Rosemary Harper, once a sheltered rich girl from Mars but now on the run from her past. We've got Jinks, one of the ship's two maintenance crew, who has overcome a past that involves a Gaian cult and who has fallen in love with Lovey, the ship's AI. Sissix, the ship's pilot is a ultra-social lizard-like Aandrisk, who has given up her family in exchange for a chance to travel the stars. Dr Chef, who, unsurprisingly, serves as both ship's doctor and chef, is a kindly soul whose species, the Grum, have a sad past which gives him a unique insight into Rosemary's past.

Ohan, the ship's navigator, is a Sianet Pair: a single creature infected with a sacred virus called the Whisperer which allows him to see patterns in physical universe that no-one else can see. Artis Corbin, responsible for the ship's fuel supply is described by Ashby as "two things: a talented algaeist and a complete asshole" Finally Kizzy Shao, the ship's second mechanic, is a passionate devotee of fire shrimps — a spicy snack from her home world — and a constant delight thanks to her stream of inappropriate comments and ideas.

As the book unfolds, each of the characters get one or more moments of development which flesh them out and fill in the details of their background. In some cases, like Ashby, it is pretty clear where things are going well ahead of time. In others, like Corbin, the development comes like a bolt from the blue. But either way, it ensure that the reader really comes to feel for the cast.

When the Wayfarer finally arrives at Hedra Ka, they find it just as troublesome as expected. The crew can't quite believe that the Galactic Commons have managed to negotiate any form of settlement with a species as obstreperous as the Toremi — clans require a consensus on everything and will cheerfully kill each other at the first hint of disagreement, with survival of the fittest determining their eventual political position — and needless to say things to not go at all smoothly.

The Long Way, which owes a more than a passing debt to Firefly and Star Wars, isn't so much a novel as a series of picaresque adventures with the journey as a framing narrative. As is probably clear by now, the situations are fun and the characters are positively delightful. Not everything is smooth emotional sailing — there's a painful episode towards the very end — but everyone comes away from the journey a better person than when they started. The book's universe feels very well realised, with all the stopping off points having their own sense of place and their own cast of strange inhabitants.

As Liz Bourke says: it's an extremely uplifting novel.