Excuse me while I read this entire series now.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers tells the story of the crew of the Wayfarer, a spaceship designed for creating wormholes through space in order to transport people and goods across large distances. When Rosemary Harper joins the crew, she’s not sure what to expect, only wanting a fresh start after leaving the Martian colony she grew up on. But the people she meets—from the reptilian pilot Sissix, garrulous techs Kizzy and Jenks, the helpful AI Lovelace, and the calm but friendly captain Ashby—show her that family doesn’t have to be something you’re born into. Sometimes, family can be something you create for yourself.

Okay, I loved this; prepare for almost nothing but compliments. The characters are so much fun, an eclectic assortment of people with different personalities and backgrounds, and they’re a fabulous cast. Even the ones who are less likable (looking at you, Corbin) are still given lots of depth and development, not left as one-note side characters. And I loved the development of all of them. It’s an impressive thing, balancing so many characters and perspectives, and allowing each of them to change and grow over the course of the story.

Speaking of the characters, I have to shout out the narrator Rachel Dulude. She does such a great job with all these characters, and I loved listening to this audiobook.

The world-building is also wonderful—or should I say universe-building? Chambers fills this book’s settings with many planets and corresponding alien races, with lots of quirks and realistic-seeming cultural differences. I get the feeling that there’s a lot more lore that didn’t make it into the book that Chambers created anyway, and it makes the settings feel so tangible. Sometimes, the explanations of certain things are sort of just spouted off by a character in a very expositional way, but it’s so creative and interesting that I didn’t really care.

There’s also a lot of humor and heart in this story, as well as some decently engaging action. The journey across the galaxies into a contentious part of space is at times a little meandering (though in service of a character’s journey) and at times intense. I think Chambers strikes a good balance between plot- and character- development.

And the themes are great—at its core, this is a hopeful story, even though it’s clear that the various beings in this story have suffered to get to where they are. Humans as a species particularly had a rough time, fleeing their dying planet, and there are inter-species quarrels that are relatable here on Earth today. The reflection of problems we deal with—racism, classism, xenophobia, and so on—are transferred brilliantly to this fictional future. And truly, this is a book about being humane, about friendship and second chances, and never giving up.

In the end, I adored The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. This is no surprise, as I also loved Chambers’ Monk and Robot books. This story echoes the themes in those, acting as a safe space for queer and neurodiverse and otherwise marginalized groups to be the heroes in a character-driven story. And something about a vision of humans centuries in the future, still making families and striving for better lives, is so moving. The scrappy, tight knit crew is reminiscent of Firefly, and the persistent hope as the beating heart of this story is so very Star Trek. What if, this book posits, we come together in the future? What if things are better?

And what if I start book two right now? Oh, wait, that’s not a hypothetical; I already have the audiobook downloaded and ready to go.