sophia_sol | Entries tagged with author: becky chambers

Whew, coming in just under the wire, here's my voting plans for the Hugo best novel! Obviously She Who Became The Sun is required to win, but in any other year both my #2 and #3 choices would be strong contenders for first place in my mind, and it's just too bad they can't all three get awards! Links to my full reviews in the titles of the books.

1. She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan

I cannot vote anything but this for first place because it's perfect in every way.

2. A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine

It may not reach the same degree of delighting-me-on-every-level that A Memory Called Empire did, but it's still a fascinating and compelling book and very well done.

3. Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki

A book that's doing its own thing, haven't really seen anything else like it, and I am HERE for it.

4. A Master of Djinn, by P Djélí Clark

Not as strong as his novella in the same world (The Haunting of Tram Car 015), especially in terms of development of character for the protagonist, so I was disappointed -- but it was still good, and I do love the worldbuilding.

5. The Galaxy and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers

Usually I love Chambers' approach of writing plotless novels about disparate characters interacting and being generally hopeful, but this one focuses on themes of children and parenthood and reproductive choices, and those are just not themes that inherently speak to me, so instead of finding it cozily enjoyable I was just bored.

6. Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

Andy Weir doesn't understand how humans work, doesn't understand how the soft sciences work, doesn't understand how communication works, is a little too into leaders being autocratic, and mostly just cares about expositing at length about science things he thinks are cool. I'm glad he has found his niche, and I am charmed by how much he loves science, but I did not like this book.

Woohoo I finally got through another Hugo category! Here's how I'm voting for the novellas this year. Links to full reviews in the titles.

1. Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I LOVED THIS. I was not expecting it at all and it blew me away!

2. The Past is Red, by Catherynne M Valente

Yes, I'm surprised as you are that I'm ranking a Valente this high, but you know what, every now and then she manages to write something that really works for me, and this does.

3. Fireheart Tiger, by Aliette de Bodard

Loved everything about this one except that the romance felt too rushed.

4. A Spindle Splintered, by Alix E Harrow

Although I don't love everything this book is doing, I still really liked it!

5. No Award

6. A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers

I've loved most of the Becky Chambers books I've read in the past, but this one just really rubbed me the wrong way in a number of aspects. DNF.

Not ranking: Across the Green Grass Fields, by Seanan McGuire

I find myself so deeply irritated by something or other about every single book in this series I've read over the years for the Hugos and I'm not gonna keep on trying.

This is a book exactly in line with what one would expect based on the previous works in this series, but somehow this one didn't land all the way for me, and I'm not sure why.

Did I like reading about a bunch of different aliens all dealing with their own stuff but doing their best to be reasonable to each other when unexpectedly stuck together for a multi-day emergency? Sure! But I never felt exactly invested, the way I did for the previous books. It was merely a mildly nice way to spend a couple hours. Which isn't a bad thing for a book to achieve, but is not quite what I hope for out of Chambers. Disappointing. :(

I love Becky Chambers' writing, a lot. Every book of hers I've read so far has been eminently worth reading, and I love the way she approaches her books. She gives me this feeling that she sees truly how difficult and complex people are, but knows that people are nonetheless wonderful and worthwhile. As is the rest of the universe. It's just, like, goodhearted and hopeful without feeling like it's ignoring reality to feel that way.

This book is no exception.

It's about four astronauts on a mission out into space to visit four different far-away worlds to learn things, with the intention to come back to Earth 80 years later. It's a record written by one of those four astronauts, of their experiences, to act as the necessary prologue for a question they have to ask the Earth they left behind decades ago.

And it's like....a love letter to science, and to the wonders of the universe, and to the way people are so vastly capable of community and support on both macro and micro levels. It's so lovely and I love it a lot and I had a lot of feelings and I cried. GOOD JOB BOOK.

(Also it's casually queer and polyamorous with no big deal made of any of it and it's great. Their genders and sexualities and relationships just are what they are.)

Set in the same world as Chambers' other two novels, but all three are stand-alones that you don't have to read the others to understand.

My emotional involvement in this instalment was a little slow to start. This book has approximately a zillion viewpoint characters it swaps between. (Okay, more like, uh, 6 or 7 or something like that I think?) And I am just SO BAD at names and at keeping characters straight so each chapter switch it was like "so who is this again???" Which kind of interrupts one's ability to be swallowed by a book.

Like the others in the series, this book is low on plot. It's basically about showing you a snapshot of a culture experiencing a time of transition, introducing you to the various ways different sorts of people experience what's going on, allowing you to see and understand that culture through many eyes.

The cultural context in question: the group of humans who continue to live on the generation ships which humanity used to get to this part of space, even though there are now plenty of well-settled habitable planets available to live on. Now that these humans have access to a) alien technology, b) alien money, and c) planets, how does that change the self-sufficient and communal life of the Exodans aboard their ships? And how much is it desirable to change?

Interesting questions, and interestingly addressed. Having the many viewpoints definitely aided with what this book was trying to do. But it also meant that as a reading experience it didn't work for me as well as Chambers' previous books. Which is too bad. But "not quite as good as the others in this series" is not at all the same thing as "not very good" - this is a good book, and certainly worth reading!

I did find that things picked up for me after ( a certain spoilery thing happened )

HELLO YES I HAD A LOT OF FEELINGS.

So I accidentally went and read a bunch of two-star reviews on goodreads when I was partway through this book, which was great for making me mad about how people are Wrong On The Internet. At least it's averaging 4.5 stars so the people who are Wrong are in the minority.

But also like, the things that people dislike the book for are part of why I like it (optimistic about people being generally kind to each other, cares about diversity, more interested in characters than plot). Which I guess indicates that the book is in fact highly successful at what it sets out to do, it's just that not everyone wants that.

This book is a sequel to Becky Chambers' first book, The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, and I still adore the title to that book btw. But it's the sort of sequel where you actually don't need to have read the first book to follow this one, because none of the main characters are the same between the two books, and this book evidently has no interest in letting the reader know anything else that happened to the first set of protagonists.

The main characters are Pepper, a human woman, and Sidra, an AI in an illegal humanoid body who Pepper is helping out. ( Read more... )