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The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Wayfarers, Book 1

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The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Written by: Becky Chambers
Narrated by: Patricia Rodriguez
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About this listen

Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2016.

Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, 2016.

Firefly meets Mass Effect in this thrilling self-published debut!

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 reptillian pilot, to Kizzy and Jenks, the constantly sparring engineers who keep the ship running. Life onboard 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. They'll earn enough money to live comfortably for years...if they survive the long trip through war-torn interstellar space without endangering any of the fragile alliances that keep the galaxy peaceful. But Rosemary isn't the only person onboard with secrets to hide, and the crew will soon discover that space may be vast, but spaceships are very small indeed.

©2014 Becky Chambers (P)2015 Hodder & Stoughton Adventure Science Fiction Space Opera Fiction Interstellar

What the critics say

"A joyous, optimistic space opera.... Although it isn't shy about tackling Big Questions, Planet is a heart-warming debut novel that will restore your faith in science fiction (specifically) and humanity (in general)." (Tor.com)
"One of the most enjoyable, brilliantly realised spacey SF novels I've read in ages." (James Smythe, author of The Echo)

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The performance was amazing and really fit the text well! The change in time used to speak for a character was really distinctive without ever getting annoying or distracting

great!

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Wow, I loved this book. I loved the complex understanding and reunderstandings of what it means to be a sentient being that this book explored. The relationships and growth of each of the crew member onboard the Wayfairer were really lovely to dive into. Would recommend highly.

Truly Enjoyable!

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I enjoyed this book but not as much as I wanted to. The plot is very thin just used as a vehicle to give us the origin stories of the crew. Hopefully the sequel will tell more of a story more we know the main characters.

Character studies cunningly disguised as a story.

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The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is a fun story that translates many current social issues into an interstellar context. Entertaining and surprisingly insightful.
#Audible1

Fun Little Story

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Cute story, loads of acttion, mostly enjoyablecharacters,The bits that are meant to be messaging metadata are pointless and annoying, but not too many of them, thankfully.

Cute.

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This is a beautiful, epic length story about found family, culture clash and conciliation, learning about oneself through living with other people, making choices, and space.

Very character-centric, the story quickly falls to the side as each chapter visits a new character and brings us their unique life and point of view. The narrator, Rodriguez, wonderfully changes accents, cadence and drawls to fit each character and distinguish their voices. It enriches the dialogues and reinforces the diverse alien cast of this spaceship crew.

Well recommended for anyone looking to have a lot of feelings about people searching for adventures or escapes and finding love, family and friends. Also, a love letter to space and a universe of possibilities.

While it is book 1 of a series, I found it enjoyable on its own. The plot will surely be furthered in the next books in the series, but this contained everything I needed to fall in love with the characters and understand everything that's going on.

Finding family amongst the stars

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This book was nice. The characters were fun but predictable. But every couple chapters just felt like an episode to a tv show. A conflict would arise, it would be solved. Repeat ad nauseum. I would've rated this book higher because I actually enjoyed it but holy moly the ending is so drawn out and boring. I ended up increasing the read speed to nearly 2x for the last 2 hours and had no problem following the story because nothing really happened.

Episodic and boring.

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The story:
This is something to read if you're looking for rich, deep, comprehensive world-building. Becky Chambers imbues her stories with a rich vein of compassion, hope, and, for lack of a better word, humanity. At first blush it may appear a Firefly clone (rag-tag group of "misfits" with a dashing Captain flying their way through space dealing with the gigantic Galactic Commons) but it's more like the flipside of that 'verse. These are not pirates or warriors, these are working class folks trying to do a a good days work, get paid, and life their lives. It's just happens that instead of a road crew, these folks build the tunnels (aka wormholes) spaceships use to zip around the galaxy.
It's a story buy turns funny and exciting and sexy (so low-key sexy) and addresses deeply human questions about how we interact with others and how we can work together.

The audiobook
The recording is very well done. While not a full cast, the reader, Patricia Rodriguez ,changes her voice enough to easily identify the speaker and imbue them with character without being showy or distracting.
I've read the book on page, but I've returned to this recording as a comfort listen a lot recently, it's like a warm audio blanket.

lovely telling of a lovely tale

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I loved this book so much that I had to stop listening and buy a physical copy so I could binge read it super fast. Loved this story and the amazing characters Chambers created.

fantastic

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I loved every moment of the journey! These characters are sure to stay alive in my mind for a long time.

Fantastic characterization!

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