Never Be Bored
16 September 2020
The Family We Made Along the Way
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman and tv show; Digger by Ursula Vernon; Firefly tv show.
Maybe the real journey was the family we made along the way. Or something like that. Anyway, sometimes a family is one Aandrisk, one Grum, a Sinat Pair, an AI, and five humans. In The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer as they set off for a long, long trip.
It's more character-driven, rather than plot-driven, which gives a nice change from, like, action laser fight scenes in space. I especially love how this sci-fi novel incorporates non-human beings—no "fun alien sidekicks" here. In this world, humans certainly aren't the most powerful people around and they aren't the default even though humans happen to make up half the crew of the Wayfarer.
For a book about traveling across the galaxy to build wormholes, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet still creates a lovely sense of home that feels so familiar. If you're looking for sci-fi that'll make you smile, give this novel a shot.
If you prefer fantasy over sci-fi, try the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. Lyra Balacqua and her daemon Pantalaimon leave their home to go north, and on the way befriend witches, an armored bear, Gyptains, and an aeronaut. As the series continues, they travel even further from home—straight out of this world. (There's a decent HBO tv adaptation, too, but I like the books better. The 2007 movie adaptation of the first book, however, is trash.)
Sometimes a family is a wombat who doesn't have time for magic, a disgraced hyena, and a... what even is that thing? Digger-of-Unnecessarily-Convoluted-Tunnels, or just Digger, for short, bumps into a pocket of old magic while underground and finds herself lost and far from home when she unexpectedly burrows up through the floor of a temple. Graphic story Digger by Ursula Vernon is a beautiful, hilarious, epic read—give it a try!
If your favorite character in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet was Kizzy Shao, mech tech extraordinaire of the Wayfarer, you'll love Kaylee Frye, Serenity's mechanic in the tv show Firefly. Join this crew of misfits in the outer edges of the system as they search for work as a mostly legitimate cargo ship and occasionally do some crime.