The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet

A very interesting take on a familiar theme. Really interesting to see a standard space opera reframed into a subtle, sensitive, character-led story. I felt that the writing and the world building were sometimes a bit shaky. Like a computer game where you suddenly walk through the landscape and realise it’s all painted on a single 2D plain. Kizzy and Jenks - for example - were stereotypical ‘crazy spacers’, but there was sufficient depth in the background to the various races, especially the Aandrysk to make it an interesting set up. The world building was a mixed bag. The races and the social differences were interesting and nuanced, the timeline and some of the technical implications were … questionable. Everything interesting has happened in the last 300 years, all of these basically humanoid races are interacting and haven’t become hegemonising swarms or disappeared to long ago extinction, the tunneling process can ‘punch a hole in a planet’, but anyone with a ship and a few credits can scrape enough together for a drill … On balance, everything was forgiveable because it was an interesting, fun story that involved you with characters you could care about. I liked it a lot, but maybe won’t hurry too quickly into the second one.