The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, 443 pages

Ashby is the captain of the Wayfarer, a wormhole-tunneling ship staffed by a multi-species crew that is the best at what they do. But Ashby isn't too organized when it comes to filing, so he hires on Rosemary to be his clerk. While the rest of the crew is well versed in space travel, Rosemary has lived a sheltered life on Mars, where, despite studying interspecies relations, she's never met a non-Human. So she's something of an outsider when she reaches the Wayfarer. But she soon finds out that everyone in the crew is a bit of an outsider in their own way.

This is a great slice-of-life book about chosen families. It reminds me of a multi-species take on the gone-too-soon TV series Firefly, which is very high praise from this fan. Chambers created MANY worlds and species, all with painstaking detail to physical, cultural, religious, and social details — and despite the author being Human, the only possible Human bias is in the fact that there are five humans on board the ship, though they are a diverse group of Humans. (BTW, I'm capitalizing Humans because Chambers does so in the book; all species are capitalized.) Anyway, I LOVED this book, and I can't wait to read the next book in this series. Looking forward to talking about it at book group on Monday!