I heard some great things about the Wayfarers trilogy by Becky Chambers so when I saw the first two books for a good price I decided to get them. A couple of months ago I started The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet but had put down about half way through. Last week I picked it back up and read the rest of the book! And today I’ll tell you all about my thoughts about this sci-fi book. Lets get into it.

The long way to a small angry planet follows a crew made up of all different kinds of species in space. They take a long job and we follow their journey as they come across all kinds of challenges along the way.

Cover

I love the cover of this edition! It’s quite simple but still so beautiful. You can clearly see that it’s a sci-fi book and they used gorgeous colors. I’m so happy I got the first two books in this edition. Hopefully the third one will be released with a matching cover.

Plot

This book is not plot driven at all, it’s very much a character driven story. There is quite some worldbuilding going on throughout all of the book, and that took a lot out of my concentration. It was actually the reason I put it down for a while, I didn’t feel like I was able to take in all of the world, or universe I guess haha, and all of the story.

We start the story off with Rosemary, the newest crewmember on the Wayfarer. As soon as the story starts you realise that she’s harbouring a secret, and throughout the story you realise she isn’t the only one. All the crewmembers have their own struggles and developments to go trough. The interactions between all crew members and their personal stories are what make this book. There is a bit of a plot but it’s very thin and more of a backdrop for the development of the characters.

Characters

Rosemary is one of the first characters we get to know, she is human and this is her first off-planet job. She seems a bit insecure at first but starts to find her place among the crew and comes into her own. Rosemary is a likeable character and I liked reading about her. She very sweet and considerate.

Ashby is the captain and also human. There are however some differences between all the humans and I just love how all of it is explained. Ashby is a great captain and not at all comparable to any other of my favorite captains (Nikolai, Alosha, Jack Sparrow for example). He’s a very gentle and loving person and his crew is his family.

Sissix is a reptilian pilot and she is so cool! She was so loving and thought about everyone else first. Really enjoyed reading about her and her species. She was just such a fun character!

Kizzy and Jenks are the engineers and they are the definition of FUN! Kizzy didn’t get that much of a storyline and development but she was so cute and funny and I just love her. Jenks’s issues were super interesting and I really felt for him during the book.

There are more characters on the crew whom are all very intriguing but I won’t go into detail about them here. I really recommend reading this book so you get to know them and fall in love with this crew <3

Worldbuilding

The worldbuilding in this novel is truly phenomenal, it’s probably what I liked most about it. I keep saying worldbuilding and world but I guess it’s an universe since this takes place in space. We visit a bunch of different planets and meet a ton of different species. I thought it was so refreshing that the humans weren’t on the top of the food chain so to speak. Humans were one of the last species to join the alliance and were pretty lucky to do so. You’ll learn a lot about all the different species, their cultures, their habits and preferences and it was all just so incredibly cool!

I would highly recommend taking your time to read this book and be bedazzled by the universe and all of the different characters.