skybridge

babewiththepower.bsky.social · @babewiththepower.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet 6/10

I don't remember where I read about this book, but I added it to my long list of books for my 2024 goal to read more books than I have in recent years and for those books to be noteworthy science fiction, hopefully written by women.<br/><br/>The plot summary sounded interesting. That book title. It amused me and I thought it was humorously long because maybe the writing was going to have a humorous tilt. It turns out it didn't, it's just a rather long book title that summarizes the plot. I do prefer some humor, dry and clever preferably, but it was fine without it.<br/><br/>The universe building is highly imaginative and the description of all the different species from appearance to culture is very well done. The majority of the book, I'd say 75-80%, was spent on that species development, especially main character building, and the relationships between them on this ship, the Wayfarer. The ship/technological terminology and words from the different species' languages were great but not so many or heavily overused that it made the reading a chore. It was there just enough to add without getting too in the way.<br/><br/>All of that said, I was beginning to get slightly frustrated at that 75-80% point when the plot finally involved some action. This is a personal expectations issue. I believed that this being a journeying/traveling (a long way!) story, there would be several "adventures" along the way. There were a couple of small incidents, but the overwhelming majority of the book was spent on character interactions. That's great! It just isn't for me.<br/><br/>To boot, I was a few pages from finishing the book when out of curiosity I looked up where they go next. To my chagrin I learned that other books in the series are all different, mostly unconnected characters. Considering the amount of time spent on character building, people I really did like, I found that disappointing. It's like with short stories or novellas which when well written they only leave me wanting more and hoping it had been a novel instead, the reason I rarely read either format.<br/><br/>So that's my only caveat and as I said, a totally personal opinion. If you like a stand alone sci-fi book that spends the overwhelming majority of its time on character interactions instead of action, this would be a book for you.

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Published 2026-08-18 17:59 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere