A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers a little while ago. This is book two in the Wayfarers series and this is kind of like a tangent to the main book.
It directly follows on from events that happen at the end of the previous book but then has kind of nothing to do with the crew as it were.
This one goes straight off onto a tangent. If you like your sci-fi hopeful full of character moments and pretty damn diverse, this is a series I would highly recommend.
Becky Chambers has built this world with lots of different species… that have their own different cultures and life cycles and loads of different details in them, which remake the feel aliens.
They’re not just bipedal aliens that look vaguely humanoid or have ridges on their foreheads. No! These guys are literally aliens everything about them is completely different from what we would know as normal, and she does such a great job of giving us this information without dumping it upon us.
It’s all gradually brought in. We learn to understand it and appreciate it…but also to get to know the characters rather than justify all of their such as such an alien and they do this.
No, these people are characters first, they’re people we want to know and I really APPRECIATE her books because they’re just so HOPEFUL.
You know things happen things do go wrong, life is hard, and life does suck for certain people, but there’s always this element of hope that I think Becky Chambers is a really good writer in drawing out that level of grim determination that we’re going to make things better,
That we’re going to make it a better life for ourselves, or other people, and just this overall JOY at life in this vast world that she’s created.
I really enjoy these books. Closed and Common Orbit follows the tale of two very different individuals but they have a lot of parallels.
Their stories are told side by side in alternating chapters, and you start seeing the levels at which their lives are similar, how they respond, and the battles that they’re going through to identify who they are individuals.
This is a story about friendship and identity and who you are, and I thought it was lovely it’s just a real positive story to read.
If you’ve not read anything by Becky Chambers, please go and pick up The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, because it’s a lovely tale of a diverse group of people on a spaceship who have to make this journey. That’s all it is! It’s a journey from A to B with a group of characters, but it’s so entertaining and so well done that it really is a delight to read.
I really want a lot of stories from this world because I just like the way she tells the stories and introduces us to all these different characters and these different worlds within this galaxy. It’s just amazing really how she’s done it.
But I can’t praise these books enough. You really need to give them a go, even if sci-fi is not your thing because it’s more character-driven than sci-fi driven if that makes sense. I think you’re going to enjoy it so please give this a go.
