Paperback, 364 pages
English language
Published Aug. 7, 2017 by Hodder & Stoughton.
Once, Lovelace had eyes and ears everywhere. She was a ship's artificial intelligence system - possessing a personality and very human emotions. But when her ship was badly damaged, Lovelace was forced to reboot and reset. Now housed in an illegal synthetic body, she's never felt so isolated. But Lovelace is not alone. Pepper, an engineer who risked her life to reinstall Lovelace's program, has remained by her side and is determined to help her.
Loved the concept, but the story kept hitting the same plot beats. I liked it overall, but it still felt a little disappointing coming off of the first Wayfarer book.
Thoroughly enjoyed the worldbuilding and the story, but I felt like I had to do the work to relate to the characters. They both start off at points in their lives that are unique, interesting - and hard to wrap my head around. The author does a great job giving them distinct voices and letting them grow over time, but I just found them too far removed to really get into the book.
The secondary characters, however! I really loved reading about them from the perspectives of the protagonists, and as always, the interactions are wonderfully crafted.
i enjoyed A Closed and Common Orbit even more than the prequel one. (which has not enough story to keep up--for my taste at least) i think of it as a kind of double bildungsroman, with two developing characters between which the novel is split.
Chambers connects her scifi(-world) convincingly and smoothly with the problems most of us are facing and can relate to. it's how scifi should comment the present. and although the focus is always on the personalities, there are also a lot of social themes and thoughts.
a lot of readers mention the caring characters throughout the story, which make it so satisfactional to follow. I can support that! but it would be sad to think, it's just another form of escapism, a tweak to the genre. this is a shortcoming of understanding the themes Chambers is working on.
the real impact makes Chambers skill in building …
i enjoyed A Closed and Common Orbit even more than the prequel one. (which has not enough story to keep up--for my taste at least) i think of it as a kind of double bildungsroman, with two developing characters between which the novel is split.
Chambers connects her scifi(-world) convincingly and smoothly with the problems most of us are facing and can relate to. it's how scifi should comment the present. and although the focus is always on the personalities, there are also a lot of social themes and thoughts.
a lot of readers mention the caring characters throughout the story, which make it so satisfactional to follow. I can support that! but it would be sad to think, it's just another form of escapism, a tweak to the genre. this is a shortcoming of understanding the themes Chambers is working on.
the real impact makes Chambers skill in building up and writing emotional scenes. and because i was listening to the audiobook: R. Dulude did a great job on this one (too).
More feel-good scifi. (No spoilers:) It's Pepper backstory, and another minor character from A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. I think this one benefits a lot from taking it slowly and focussing on just two characters.
I found this much more emotional of a read than I expected. The questions about what makes a person a person, and a home a home, and a family a family, not to mention what is the relationship between ourselves and our physical bodies— it’s a lot to handle! And the book does is so gently even as it’s really fierce on valuing lives and loves. Anyway. She’s so good, Becky Chambers.
A wonderful sequel
This book went an entirely different direction from the first in the series, yet it was just as enjoyable. My favorite part of the book was the structure in which the two stories were told in parallel, coming together into a great finish. Can't wait for the third one!
A wonderful sequel
This book went an entirely different direction from the first in the series, yet it was just as enjoyable. My favorite part of the book was the structure in which the two stories were told in parallel, coming together into a great finish. Can't wait for the third one!
This is the sequel to The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. If you haven't read that book this review might be a little spoilery.
At the end of the book, the Artificial Intelligence, Lovelace, that runs the spaceship is put into a body kit to be transferred off of the ship. For Lovelace this is a huge adjustment. She is used to monitoring the vastness of space. She is used to having cameras in all the rooms of the ship. She is used to having a constant flow of information from the data stream that she is hooked into. Now she sees only through her eyes. She doesn't know the answer to any question that she is asked. She feels fragile and vulnerable.
She is taken in by Pepper, an engineer that helped with her transfer. Pepper takes her to her home and tries to teach her how …
This is the sequel to The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. If you haven't read that book this review might be a little spoilery.
At the end of the book, the Artificial Intelligence, Lovelace, that runs the spaceship is put into a body kit to be transferred off of the ship. For Lovelace this is a huge adjustment. She is used to monitoring the vastness of space. She is used to having cameras in all the rooms of the ship. She is used to having a constant flow of information from the data stream that she is hooked into. Now she sees only through her eyes. She doesn't know the answer to any question that she is asked. She feels fragile and vulnerable.
She is taken in by Pepper, an engineer that helped with her transfer. Pepper takes her to her home and tries to teach her how to respond to the world. They have to make her look natural. Putting an A.I. in a body kit is illegal.
The themes of this book are identity and belonging. How do you go about making your own identity? How do you decide where you belong?
I did not like this book as much as the first one. I think that is because Long Way was one of my best books of 2016 and this one had a lot to live up too. I missed the larger cast of all types of species in that book. This novel is much smaller in scope. It focuses on Lovelace's life with Pepper and Pepper's past as an escaped slave child being raised by an A.I. I would still recommend this book. It is not strictly necessary to have read the first one but it is recommended. So much world building was done in the first book that this book assumes that you already know.
I would still recommend this to anyone who loves sci fi and enjoyed the first book.This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story
