Record of a Spaceborn Few

Becky Chambers just writes the warmest, most comforting books. Writing in her characteristic episodic manner, she shows us what life is like for the Exodans – humans who stayed on the generation ships originally built to go off in search of a new human homeland, but which have instead become the long-term homeland themselves.

My friend who recommended it to me said: “there's something so profoundly Jewish about it.” I think she's right (although I doubt that was Chambers' intention). This is a diaspora story about a people who leave their homeland with the plan to return to a new home shortly and instead spend generations in space, learning to redefine who they are as a community and culture and their relationship to physical spaces.

A zoomed out view of the universe that Chambers' has created mostly from the human species point of view.

After reading Becky Chambers' first book I've been absolutely in love with the universe that they created.

What draws me in so much is the beautiful characters that Chambers' creates and lets us share a slice of their life.

This story starts with an event that's mentioned very much in passing in the first book about a collosal tragedy that results in the loss of one of the starships carrying the human species. That first chapter in itself is mind boggling, and the sheer tasks of collecting the bodies in space to offer the families a respectful funeral.

The story then jumps some amount of time forward (which initially I didn't realise) and we're introduced to more (I think) characters. There is also a tiny bit of connection to the first book (but sadly we don't get to revisit the original characters that I was so fond of).

For me the I struggled to keep track of the characters for around the first third of the book. I've found that Chambers' characters are drawn so vividly that this had not been a problem, but for this book I really struggled to distinguish the human characters (and I wasn't even sure if I had met them from the earlier section of the book).

Thankfully, eventually, the characters did settle out for me and I was able to tell them apart properly so I could understand who's story I was following.

As usual, the stories have a great deal of love and heart behind them and make me wish for a world like this.

It's a lovely book and story. Not my favourite of the series, but the bar was set so spectacularly high with the first it's almost impossible - that's to say that this is still a pretty darn good book on its own two feet.