[book post] The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

[queenlua]

The first half of this book was very delightful to me in a very specific way. It's Firefly, but with more varied & inventive worldbuilding, and with all that punchy, Whedonesque dialogue replaced with an overall warmer atmosphere. It's almost too warm, really, verging on twee—but it stayed just on the right side of the line for me to thoroughly enjoy puttering around space with this charmingly tropey lil' crew. Particularly this vision of space—Chambers's universe is populated with a huge variety of sentient spacefaring species, and there's very fun and thoughtful examinations of how each species' unique culture arises from various combinations of physiological/historical/environmental factors. (e.g., there's this one alien species whose whole culture revolves "the Whisper," which is a brain-virus they infect all their kids with around age 5 or so, which makes them super-intelligent in ways that are very useful for space navigation, but also drastically reduces their lifespan; it's very cool to hear from this species about their whole deal! Another example: Earth still exists, but is nowadays mostly populated by weirdo human cultists who think going to space was a mistake and that Hunter Gatherer Life Or Bust is the way to go—except, of course, for the obligatory cultist-humans who hang out at major spaceports to pass out little pamphlets advertising their faith, haha.)

But, around the halfway mark, the book's focus naturally shifts away from pure worldbuilding to more plot-y developments, and, uh... big oof.

The main hook, at the novel's start, is that we know Rosemary has joined the crew under an assumed name, and we know she's escaping something back on Mars, but we don't really know why or what.

So, when Rosemary hears a news broadcast that's very related to why she left Mars, and is overcome with emotion, I expected something interesting to come of that. Maybe a crewmate notices her tearing up, and decides to snoop around to find out more. Maybe the news broadcast is ominous foreshadowing and her past starts catching up to her a few days later. Maybe Rosemary uses the broadcast as a tentative opportunity to "test the waters," to try and gauge everyone's opinion on some "hypothetical" situation, and she pulls back when she realizes how badly the crew would handle the truth. Like, I'm not a great plotter or anything, but there's many perfectly fine directions you can go with this!

Instead, Rosemary... immediately confesses Her Entire Deal to one of her crewmates, and said crewmate is immediately and thoroughly Kind and Understanding, and he spends a long conversation convincing her that Hey You Didn't Do Anything Wrong, and extremely conveniently, yes, Rosemary is not in fact culpable for any of the bad stuff she was trying to escape on Mars, and the only sin she ever committed was forging a new identity, so there's not even anything for anyone to really forgive. This all happens in the course of a single chapter, and then the whole thing's neatly resolved forever.

What the shit?

I thought maybe this was a one-off, a weird plotting gaff in an otherwise competent book. But Chambers proceeds to do this exact "introduce conflict, immediately introduce resolution in the blandest way possible" thing repeatedly. The captain hints to Rosemary that the ship's doctor has some Relevant Backstory, and then the doctor just immediately drops his whole deal the very next chapter, no problem. Some bad stuff happens to the ship's fuel guy and it's also resolved very tidily eight seconds later.

I get episodic plot structure. I like episodic plot structure. But episodes that involve no real tensions, and nothing at stake, in which everything's always resolved by Some Long Syrupy Conversation Where Everyone Communicates Perfectly? Yeauch. I had to look away from the book a few times because I was cringing so hard.

And, actually, the story's handling of the (only!!!) Not Entirely Nice character really irked me—

Corbin is the crew's Designated Asshole, which of course meant he was my immediate favorite. (He's not even that interesting, as far as asshole characters go, but it's amazing how far even a dash of pepper will go when all you've got is boiled potatoes.) At some point, his Very Special Episode comes up, and he's in a rough situation where he needs the crew's help to get out, and—literally everyone uses this as an opportunity to dunk on Corbin? like, man's life is in danger, and everyone's still prefacing all their sentences with "well I know Corbin's an asshole but we need him"? The thing he's in danger for wasn't even his fucking fault; can you put the "christ what an asshole" sniping aside for like three seconds? It was a pretty jarring tone shift, after so many saccharine-sweet conversations between all the other crew members, and I don't think the narrative even realized how cruel everyone sounded.

This particularly bugged me because it's a sentiment I've seen from more than one piece of media, lately—a strange undercurrent of "uwu we are so inclusive and all-loving and found family uwu (except for anyone who's got some rough edges, or who has ever made a mistake, or isn't Exactly Nice in Exactly Our Preferred Way)"—and I don't much care for it! I don't think people who are superficially pleasant are the only ones who deserve nice things! also, idk, in my experience, communities that strongly favor Extremely High Emotional Regulation and Open Communication and Niceness aren't automagically these paradises where all problems are easily and instantly resolved with one conversation; it's just that the community's failure mode switches from "loud angry out-in-the-open conflict," into weird passive-aggressive snippy Mean Girls shit (think of your typical mildly-sociopathic C-suite guy, lol).

Like, the book is meant to be comfort food, and I get that, and I'm not fundamentally opposed to that, but if one dude has to get scapegoated this hard for your comfort food to work, I am... bothered.

It's a shame, because there really is lot that's really very good and fun here. Like, I was still turning pages until the end; there's something very popcorn-y fun about this book's writing style, and I continued to enjoy the worldbuilding-y aspects throughout. And yet. Alas.

I understand this was the author's debut, so maybe their later work is better? But my twee allergy is pretty sensitive, so uh, maybe it's best avoided. Plenty else to read in the meantime, while I waffle on that question :P

Comments

[jaggedwolf]

Oh man, I read this book last year and I hated it to the point of pettiness by the end. Also ended up feeling bad for the Designated Asshole.

I've heard the second book is better but the third book is back on the level of the first.

[queenlua]

hahaha omg, just read your writeup and +1 to so much of what you said. i was willing to sort of handwave away some of the species-essentialist stuff for the sake of a decent time ("it's Star Trek logic, whatever, they'll be on a new planet next week"), but uh... everything else... grated so much...! (the whole jenks and kizzy ~*~you're my brother speech~*~, oh my god no one TALKS that way, i was cringing to my toes)

thank you for being my ally in salt :P

[jaggedwolf]

It was definitely the book that made me most salty that year, haha.

[hamsterwoman]

I have *points to icon* similarly complicated feelings about this book -- I, too, found the worldbuilding elements delightful, especially all the alien stuff, and hated the way the book treated Corbin (also my favorite) without seeming to realize/care just how drastic a departure in tone that was from everything else, and also hated/was baffled by the way this book seemed allergic to character growth or any kind of meaningful arc by resolving every conflict, as you say, immediately as it started by everyone-but-Corbin being flawless and sweetly understanding. (I am also still really mad about the way the whole thing with Ohan and nonconsensual medical treatment was resolved, farming out the ethically questionable decision to the Designated Asshole and calling that good, so the book could have its cake and eat it too.)

But anyway, let me offer you the following data point: I liked books 2 (A Close and Common Orbit) and 3 (Record of a Spaceborn Few) a lot more than I did this one. There's not quite as much delightful alien stuff, but still a lot of interesting space society worldbuilding stuff, and characters are actually allowed to have flaws and conflict. It's still very "cozy" compared to most sci-fi, but not in this saccharine way that ended up setting my teeth on edge in 'Small, Angry Planet'. Book 4 (The Galaxy, and the Ground Within) worked less well for me -- there's a lot of alien stuff again, but I missed characters having meaningful arcs, which Chambers demonstrated she could do with the middle two books -- but still better than this first one. Tl, dr, was extremely conflicted about book 1 to the point of hating it, read the rest of the series and no regrets (but it also helps to go in with adjusted expectations).

[queenlua]

I am also still really mad about the way the whole thing with Ohan and nonconsensual medical treatment was resolved

right??? the whole deal with Ohan's species was one of the most interesting/inventive aspects of the worldbuilding, and i was initially expecting we'd actually dig in to that pile of bioethical quandaries, and was so excited... but it's resolved so quickly and there's some shouting but then everyone shrugs and moves on? what?? i wanted more!

farming out the ethically questionable decision to the Designated Asshole and calling that good, so the book could have its cake and eat it too

gosh, i hadn't thought of it that way but you're right. corbin got so shortchanged by this narrative, ugh

thank you for the additional data points! sounds like book 2 is worth a shot at the very least; i'll drop it somewhere on the list :)

[helicoprion]

I have seen this recced in many places, and every rec I saw made it sound fuckin' unbearable. Thanks for falling on this grenade and validating my suspicions, lol

[queenlua]

i literally thought about opening this post with the line "tl;dr dreamwidth user helicoprion, you in particular would hate this book, do not bother", hahaha. i aim to serve!

[helicoprion]

lmao, I'm flattered by this distinction.

[lassarina]

I read this for my book club and mostly I enjoyed it because at the time we were still Early Pandemic and I was really badly in need of some Softness, so I kind of skimmed over the easy resolutions. (In addition - I didn't get the Firefly vibes because I was so busy being bowled over by the Mass Effect vibes, lol, but those are in the same vein as Firefly.) Now that you mention it, though, it does feel too easy, and I'm not sure I would like it if I went back to it.

[queenlua]

okay it sounds like i should really play Mass Effect at some point ever, huh

[lassarina]

I fuckin' love the party vibes in both Mass Effect and Dragon Age. both have some significant flaws, but overall they give me more than they take away, so. in conclusion, [Dark Kermit Voice] do it.

[helicoprion]

Never got around to ME3 myself but I can vouch for the first two - fun party dynamics and lots of cool worldbuilding bits and bobs around the various alien species. Wasn't in love with the gameplay for the first one iirc, but they worked out a lot of the kinks in ME2 and combat was a pleasure.

[eternal_flames]

Love your take on this! I read this book too long ago to remember much besides the world-building and I liked it for all the reasons you said, but as soon as you got into the Rosemary thing I recalled being relieved-disappointed in that situation. Sometimes it really stresses me out when I see these tropes coming and I'm glad when they work out quickly, but sometimes I miss the narrative tension and the resulting conclusion feels unearned. I also have vague memories of being uncomfortable with the Corbin thing when that, too, went against my expectations given the tone the book had set. (Ending absolutely destroyed me though.)

I've been meaning to get to the third book in the series after reading the second, but this makes me want to reread the first as well to see how my opinion compares.

[queenlua]

So glad you liked the review :) do feel free to report back if you end up doing that reread!

Also, can I say you've got an A++ icon? Chrono Cross is one of my fave games of all time; glad to see another fan around here~

[eternal_flames]

Haha, thank you! That's how I found your journal, in fact! I think your icon has mine beat, though. :)