43. the long way to a small angry planet by Becky Chambers

This book has been on my list for a long time and I ended up buying it new as I like to throw some money to independent bookstores when my on-deck shelf can afford it (and currently it is at less then 50% width full which is the lowest it has been in several years).  It is part of what I half-jokingly and endearingly refer to as the new wave of "Woke" Science Fiction.  Other than a recommendation from a work colleague who is way ahead of me on these new authors, I had no knowledge of what to expect.  The cover is misleading as is the pull-quote ["a quietly profound, humane tour de force" - The Guardian].  It's definitely humane; quietly profound is stretching it and tour de force is simply unearned.  It is however, a thoroughly enjoyable science fiction read, inventive and compelling and at times movingly satisfying.  

The actual one area where it really is quite groundbreaking is in its structure.  There is no overarching storyline at all, no big conflict with a final climax.  It is episodic, almost like an older TV series, except that the transitions between episodes are not as delineated.  The story starts out with Rosemary, privileged young human woman from Mars who ships out on a beat-up but lovingly crewed tunneling ship.  Their job is to dig the tunnels between layers of space that allow for travel between systems.  Perspective jumps from crew member to crew member, each of which is a quirky individual and whose pasts give us knowledge about the universe we are in.  We basically follow the ship and its crew as it moves from job to job, getting to know them and the universe better.  They are ultimately setting out to do one big job that involves connecting a tunnel to a volatile species and the final chapters are about that job, but it is the people and the setting that is the throughline here, not any narrative.  

This is overall a relatively reasonable and benign world.  It's kind of the Scandinavia of science fiction world-building.  There are conflicts and problems and politics but it seems that most people are trying to make things okay.  Humans are a lesser species, saved from extinction only by the luck of one of their pilgrimage ships escaping dying earth running into a superior race of aliens.  The fun here are the exotic locations and the cool side characters.  This book is almost like an introduction to a tabletop RPG campaign setting put into a narrative form.  There is not a lot of tension and I appreciated that.  It was an easy page-turner that had me moved on several moments, a much needed tonic from some of the bad books I had to go through recently.