 I was both very impressed and disappointed with this book at the same time. Stick around, I'll tell you why. This book got a lot of positive attention last year when it was published. A lot of positive attention, 100% positive attention. I've been hearing about it for some time. I only just got it in September and read it in October. Apparently it was the result of a successful Kickstarter in 2012, I think. Anyway, let me give you a quick 30-second description of the book. All right. This young woman from Mars named Rosemary, she is running from her mysterious past. She signs on with a small space freighter called the Wayfarer, which is crewed by a ragtag mix of misfits. They get the biggest jobs of their career, which is opening new wormholes into unexplored territory in the center of the galaxy, where there are hostile aliens who normally don't want other people in there. This book is driven almost exclusively by character. It has some of the strongest character building writing I've ever seen, no kidding. But the plot is so paper thin, it's almost not there at all, and that's my problem with it. Like I said, Becky Chambers has done some really impressive character building writing here. I wasn't kidding in the 30-second description when I said it's some of the strongest of its type that I've ever seen. Let me describe to you this cast of characters. Rosemary signs on to this small ship called the Wayfarer, and there's this goth chick who works in the engine room, and she's crazy. And there's this dwarf guy who works in the computer room, and he's in love with the ship's AI, and he is crazy. The ship's pilot is a reptilian alien woman who is kind of a sexual reject from her race, and she is crazy. The ship's cook slash doctor is kind of a grandfatherly giant blob slash crab thing, and he is crazy. You're starting to see the pattern here. The ship's life support director is very grumpy. Everything is by the book with him. He has a stick up his ass and nobody gets along with him. The ship's captain is a regular white guy who's always having to roll his eyes at the antics of his crazy crew, and he's carrying on a long distance love affair with a super hot alien woman who is way above his status. How did that happen? I mean, what does this sound like to you? Yeah, in fact, I would call this a cross between Firefly and Farscape. In fact, it is so much that that I have to believe it was deliberate. This book is all cliche. It is 100% cliche. All the characters are... Every character in this book is a cliche that's pushed to its farthest possible boundary. Normally, I would find that completely intolerable, and I would find a book like this entirely unreadable, but Becky Chambers is such a good writer that she makes these characters charming and acceptable, and she makes all that work. The problem, like I said before, is that the overarching plot is so unsatisfying. It is really very thin, and it goes nowhere, and there's no payoff. I'm going to be somewhat spoilery with the rest of the things that I say, so it's up to you whether you want to watch the rest or not. The major plot conflict, if I can even call it that, is, like I said, that they are pioneering wormholes into new territory. There's a race of bizarre aliens that nobody understands. In fact, their setup is being so bizarre that they can't be understood, but they don't allow anybody else into the center of the galaxy. Well, as it turns out, one faction of these bizarre aliens is somehow being allowed into the Federation, and they want freight lines to be taken into the center of the galaxy, and the Wayfarer is picked to do this, because they're a crazy bunch, but they're the best at what they do. The progression of this book is arranged around the characters. There are blocks of two, maybe three, chapters that are devoted entirely to examining one character and then moving on to another, like a TV show. Every conflict that each individual character faces is resolved within a chapter or two chapters, like a TV show, and the overarching plot really doesn't matter. It's like reading a written version of Seinfeld. There's all this crazy character interaction going on, but nothing's happening. We read all of these adventures with each individual character from the first person point of view. The point of view changes from each character from one to the next. Near the end of the book, you turn the page to a new chapter, and suddenly you're reading from the point of view of one of these bizarre center of the galaxy aliens, whatever they're called, and I'm thinking like, oh, this is going to be really weird, but it isn't. They're just Klingons. They're just four-legged Klingons. There's nothing bizarre about them at all. Some of them don't want humans coming into the center of the galaxy. There's some sabotage. It's quickly resolved, not much of a plot, and very unsatisfying in that regard, because that's what I want. So I can see why so many people are nuts about this book, because the writing style is very strong. I've said it several times here before, and I'll say it again. Becky Chambers is extremely good at writing character. So my problem with the book, I guess, is a problem of preference. I'm certainly not going to give this book a thumbs down. In fact, I would recommend it. It depends on what kind of thing people want. OK, so that's my review of Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. The Angry Planet is not Earth, by the way, and it's not Mars either. And there is interspecies lesbian sex in case you were wondering. Please remember to press that like button. It helps my videos get seen. And then subscribe so you can come back next time. 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