“The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet” by Becky Chambers
The starship Wayfarer does something that would seem extraordinary to us, but commonplace to its crew. Their job is to build wormholes to make it easier for other starships to travel between the many planets of a galaxy-spanning alliance of alien races. Half of the crew are humans, who are one of the junior members of that civilisation. Rosemary Harper is the crew's newest recruit, a seemingly ordinary recent graduate fleeing a secret in her past who has the unenviable task of trying to bring some organisation to the ship. She has to adjust to the new crew, including some alien races she'd never even heard of, while at the same time preparing for the ship's biggest commission to construct a wormhole to a planet in the middle of what was recently a war-zone.
I don't think the book was exactly what I expected it to be, but I did like it. The initial setup (new recruit joins the crew of a small spaceship) immediately made me think of the likes of Firefly, the Paradox trilogy or The Tales of the Ketty Jay, but I think this was a bit misleading because it's got a lot less action than any of those other series and while the crew may have their own secrets and eccentricities they're much more law-abiding than the rogues that make up most of the other crews. I wouldn't count this as being space opera, instead it is more of an interstellar travelogue with a big focus on the characterisation and in particular how different species of humans and aliens interact with each other.
I liked the characters, and I liked the way they interacted with each other and how they had to all adjust the way they behaved to take into account they were sharing the ship with three other alien races (and even the humans have big cultural differences, some of them being from a culture of committed pacifists who won't accept the use of weapons even when heading into a potential warzone). The aliens had a convincing mix of behaviour that is comprehensible and some ways of thinking that are different for us to understand (some of the other crewmembers find it difficult to adjust to a crewmember of a reptilian race who only count their children as people once they start to become adults). It takes a while to really get to know them but I thought there were some great scenes in the second half of the book. If I had a criticism I'd say the plot maybe takes a bit too long to get going, but by the time of the finale it has becomes a compelling story. I'm definitely interested in seeing how the story develops in the sequel.
Rating : 8 / 10