Title: The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet (#1)
Author: Becky Chambers
Published by: HARPER Voyager
Released: 2014
Source: Library
Summary: Welcome to the Wayfarer! A tunneling ship captained by Ashby Santosa. Tunneling ships travel through space, boreing holes, and connecting one galaxy to another.
The Wayfarer's crew is a family. A family that newly hired Rosemary Harper is going to join. She's going to discover the high energy engineer Kizzy, the Comp Tech Jenks, the moody algeist Corbin, the navigator Sissix, the mysterious Ohan, the friendly chef/doctor Dr. Chef, and the friendly A.I. Lovey.
When Ashby takes a job for a new species added to the GC, a long journey begins.
My Thoughts: Disappointing! Overhyped! Kind of boring and dull! That's what I mainly think of this book. I'm going to be the odd one out when it comes to this book, but that's okay. My review, my opinion, respect each other's differences right? This just wasn't a book I loved.
I'll start with the positives, because it's not like I hated everything about the book. I liked the characters. They were fun. The writing wasn't bad either.
My biggest gripe was I found this book so long and dull! It felt like it took me forever to finish this. I think it was so slow for me because there was no real plot. I know this is marketed as a character focused novel, but that doesn't serve as an excuse for having no real plot and purpose. It felt like there were a lot of small vignettes in place of the plot. I just wasn't a fan.
I did have some personal opinion gripes, one being some of the relationships. I felt like Rosemary's love life came out of left field, and I didn't buy it. I didn't see the chemistry. I saw friendship sure, but nothing else.
I also was just confused by Jenks being in love with the A.I. Lovey. I know they tried to sell her as this sentient being, like look, she's just like us! Had a little bit of that preachy tone, as we must accept all. Sorry, to me an A.I. is just a machine, and I can't see falling in love with a machine. I once watched a documentary about people who were sexually attracted to machines, roller coasters, bridges, trains, speakers, and the Statue of Liberty, and I just thought that whole thing was weird as well. Call me intolerant if you want, I don't care. My thoughts, my opinions.
The last gripe is about this book being a Kickstarter funded project. There's something about that that just rubs me the wrong way. I have no problem of people giving their money to these kind of things, if they want to, but at this point and time, I would never donate the money to it. Some kickstarter ideas I could see donating money to, but not a person writing a book. I read the author's acknowledgments and just felt kind of ughh. There are so many authors, and people, that take responsibility for themselves and don't ask for handouts. They have an idea, and they work towards that idea, having to sometimes struggle all the way. So, if I had been stuck in the author's predicament, (which I think if I remember right was that she didn't have a job at the moment in time she was writing the book, and she had to choose between finding a job to support herself or continuing to write the novel (??). The Kickstarter was pretty much to fund her bills and necessities as she was writing the book. I just think that's kinda seedy, irresponsible, definitely not the way I was raised.) I think I would have gotten a paying job, and worked on the novel in my downtime. A lot of other writers do this. I don't know, people asking for handouts often times make me leery, especially when I think they could have found another way to further their dreams. Mini rant over. And no, I'm not going to give you money when you can be Responsible and make it yourself. I'm a mean one.
I also felt like whenever there was action or conflict in the story, it got wrapped up very quickly and then was never mentioned again. That was weird.
So yeah, I'm not a fan of this book. I wanted to like it, was excited to try it, but just ended up bored and trudging through it. If it had a plot, some thing to speed it along, I might have liked it more. This was just way overhyped for more. I need more than just some fun characters hanging around on a ship.
BOOKCITEMENT LEVEL 3.2/5
Not the Space Adventure I Was Hoping For.
No comments:
Post a Comment