Comments on: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Becky Chambers

By: Jeanne

Jeanne — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 13:31:00 +0000

In reply to Jeanne. Last night I finished reading this, very late, and I cried when Lovelace died. So the excessive politeness didn't make the characters seem less real to me, with the possible exception of Ashby, who we don't really get to know.

By: Charlie (The Worm Hole)

Charlie (The Worm Hole) — Tue, 05 Apr 2016 07:41:00 +0000

Oh dear, this reminds of a book I never finished some years ago. It was a historical fantasy that did something similar, and it just silly because the message, as such, was trying to get fantasy readers to like and accept the idea of elves and dwarfs and trolls… I’ll stick with Firefly.

By: Katy

Katy — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 05:55:00 +0000

So this is actually the problem I have with Jessica Jones – that it models the kind of behavior it wants to see to the point where I feel like it’s checking off talking points rather than letting the characters develop in an organic way. I started getting sick of all the GIFs of Jessica and Trish saying perfect, bad-ass feminist things, because it’s not hard to tell a toxic dude to stay away from you when he’s literally a crazy murderer, and making feminist decisions is usually more nuanced than that. I wish it were more like Gaudy Night, where literally every character in the book is a feminist except for the actual murderer, but they still have to think about how to be feminist, and they all have different interests and motivations, and sometimes they make questionable decisions.

By: Alley

Alley — Sun, 03 Apr 2016 00:42:00 +0000

It feels mean to complain about it cos I mean, in real life I want people to be super nice and courteous but this sounds so boring. Which aliens and far away space travel, that very much should NOT be boring. So, I guess. That is sort of impressive?

By: IfyoucanreadthisBina

IfyoucanreadthisBina — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 12:36:00 +0000

Hahaha great now I won’t be able to read this one without laughing at all the courteousness 😀 I did hope for Pluto but deep space travel sounds awesome as well, I’ll take it.

By: Athira

Athira — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 18:26:00 +0000

I was just thinking that I had heard about this one recently and then you mentioned FireFly and that’s it! Someone compared this book to Firefly and I have been meaning to read this one. I find it so hard to like characters who are overly nice. Maybe because they generally feel fake and unrealistic.

By: Jeanne

Jeanne — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 13:13:00 +0000

I want to read this one, but feel like you’ve kept me from expecting too much–the title, even, promises more humor than the book evidently delivers.

By: Aonghus Fallon

Aonghus Fallon — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 09:04:00 +0000

Your piece reminded me of Star Trek – both the original series and STTNG. The original was three guys perpetually squabbling. In Star Trek: the Next Generation’ everybody got along just fine, which was kind of dull. Maybe ‘The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet’ might have been better if everybody was consistently polite to one another while also trying to contain their own prejudices – ie a bit more like real life? One plus being that changes to the existing storyline (in terms of outcomes) would have been pretty minimal. The characters would still *behave* in the same way.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 04:03:00 +0000

In reply to Jenny @ Reading the End.

I figured there had to be, but I was also picturing an entire voyage of earnest sharing times – and picturing Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein 🙂

By: Tasha B. (heidenkind)

Tasha B. (heidenkind) — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 02:41:00 +0000

A story needs some sort of conflict to be interesting and move forward, sooo…. No, not churlish.