Books 2016 - The Long Way to a Small and Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
I find myself on a bit of a mission this year - to find some good science fiction that doesn't revolve around the universe being as much into war as our own species has been so far, that isn't just Hollywood-waiting-to-be-made-into-a-movie (sadly similar to rule 1), that involves real female as well as male characters, and - because why make a mission easy? - preferably written by a woman. I'm happy to read it from a male writer too, but on current experience I suspect I'm alot less likely to find it written by a male writer - and also I'm bored with scanning the sci-fi/fantasy shelves and finding nothing but male authors (unless there are vampire romances involved).
So when I spotted A Long Way to an Angry Planet in Waterstones, I was a bit excited. Female author - tick; non-war plot - tick; main character's female - tick; gorgeous cover - bonus tick; and here's the blurb:
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 reptilian pilot, to Kizzy and Jenks, the constantly sparring engineers who keep the ship running. Life on board 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 space without endangering any of the fragile alliances that keep the galaxy peaceful.
But Rosemary isn't the only person on board with secrets to hide, and the crew will soon discover that space may be vast, but spaceships are very small indeed.
This turned out to be a bit misleading - sometimes in good ways, sometimes not. For instance, space is not war-torn at all, not the space that the Wayfarer flies through. One of the side-characters is a soldier (though her biggest plot is being the human male captain's love interest, despite being a different species) but the overall impression is not that everyone's about to be plunged into galactic war - so yeay, another tick towards the mission.
On the other hand, the book isn't about Rosemary - she's the main character for maybe a couple of chapters, and then it flips between various characters, and is reasonably heavy on the male captain of the ship. But, what's interesting is that some of those characters are various non-humans (although they tend to take a fe/male form either way). If I count the main characters, we end up with main females (Rosemary, Kizzy, Sissix, Lovey +Pei), and main males (Ashby, Jenks, Corbin, ChefDoctor, Ohan) - so a sort of even-split if you count Pei. And it doesn't feel male-centric, except that their leader is a man. So I think that gets it a tick.
But... I wanted to like this book so much more than I did. I did finish it, and I did want to pick it up to read - it wasn't written awfully, and things happened that I wanted to follow, but at the end of the day I felt more like I was reading about someone's very cool take on the galaxy, and more particularly how we should all live in it, than I was a story about interesting characters. The vast majority of it was lecture-ish, first explaining the world-building to us, and then explaining the author's take on how people should relate to each other. And you know me - I'm not a tell me kind of reader. I will admit to actually skipping over the "extracts from reference data" that were inserted throughout, where various characters were checking something out - they were just tldr. I liked the sound of her galaxy very much, it's just that I don't want to be told about it in a non-fiction kind of way, I want to read stories that are set in it, where I can discover how amazing it is for myself.
The characters were mostly pretty stereotypical, with a few splinters away from that mold (the captain didn't believe in weapons - go him!), and they weren't explored in any depth at all. They read very much as Hollywood-types - the techs were brilliant-hippy-type-dudes, the captain was wise and understanding, there was a guy no one liked much although he was brilliant at his job, the pilot/effective second in command was feisty but a kind person... We had alot of information about everyone, so that they felt like real people that way, but for instance Rosemary's big secret was introduced, dropped for most of the book, and then revealed, explained and forgiven in half a dozen pages - there was just no real depth to anyone. Like the galaxy, we were shown the characters, the story wasn't really about any of them. There was a massive plot-thing right at the end, which would have been fascinating to go through with the character, but actually we were shown that from even further away than all the rest of it.
It's like - it's on the right track, but I want this book to be more of everything. More real. More three-dimensional.
And then I got to the end and discovered that it was crowd-funded as a self-published book via Kickstarter, before being picked up by Hodder and Stoughton. Then I got further on and found that the female author thanked her wife, and that was cool too, because I do like to read signs that the world is progressing (which is what sci-fi is all about too). So, on the one hand, I wish this author so much well - on the other hand, her book still isn't what I want from a science fiction book written in the 2000s, or from a book with a plot and characters I fall in love with.
So I guess I'll keep looking. And if you've got recs (even if you've already given them to me!), then please do shout out! *g*