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.

3.5 stars. Didn't have the magic of the first in the series, but I liked it well enough. A particular character was extremely annoying, but he grew on me. I had hoped for a bit more, but ... well. Still very warm.

Wish there were more slice-of-life SF and Fantasy books like this. I'm pretty tired of saving the world, you know? Heh.

This was my favorite so far. I think perhaps it was because it was written from the perspective of youth? A mother of young children, a teen, a young adult, and then characters that were older or “closer” to death. The play between innocence and death and everything in between was just...so excellent. It felt like there was more to this than your typical sci fi, and it definitely let me thinking.

Just like any book in the wayfarers series I loved the exploration of cultures and species and customs. And this iteration is probably more focused on that aspect than any of the others, truly exploring one group of people.  Their daily lives, their worries, their dreams. And although I found it a beautiful story I found it slightly lacking.

Because it was about so many different people there are always some you simply don't care about. I found that extra in this book because there really isn't an overarching story. All of the characters are mostly separate, only some interaction in some tiny way. I found it hard to be engulfed in the story because it wasn't really going anywhere. It wasn't leading you through it at all. 

I got the same magical feeling I always have reading these books, but the directionlessness made it harder for me to actually finish it. 

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com

This third part of the Wayfarers series focuses on the Exodan Fleet. This has been mentioned a few times in Long Way to A Small Angry Planet and A Closed And Common Orbit. But this third book is set on the Exodan fleet and is about the group of people living on it.

The Exodan fleet is the last of the humans who left Earth because it was dying. They built huge generational ships for humanity to live on and set off into the stars. This book is set around 70 years after the Exodan Fleet joined the Galactic Commons – this universe's version of the Federation. They have been given new technology and even a star to orbit. But it seems the Exodan Fleet are still searching for a proper place to live.

I think the thing I love most about this whole series is how humanity is portrayed. In a lot of science fiction books, humans are the strongest, smartest, they run the galaxy. The humans of Wayfarers are vastly different. To aliens they smell, they are too exuberant. They live in clunky old ships and are still searching for something. The way it's put in the book is that the other alien species have had the time to adapt to space travel. But the humans are still trying to figure that part out, where they fit into the universe.

Before starting Record Of A Spaceborn Few I had seen one complaint that it wasn't very science-fiction-like. And I guess that's true to an extent. This whole series is more speculative science fiction. But this book, in particular, is very character driven. Unlike the first two books in the Wayfarers series, this has a large cast of characters. They all seem separate at first but as the story goes on you become invested as their stories intertwine.

I love that this series is normalising gender neutral language and LGBT pairings in science-fiction. In the past sci-fi was a man's genre. All the authors were men and the stories all had that white, male perspective. Aliens were all vaguely human-shaped, women were mostly just there for sex. I really like the fact sci-fi authors are beginning to realise alien species would be totally different from our norm and so you can't write them with our human biases.

It seems like this book is the reward for the previous books in this series. Now that we got to know the Wayfarers universe, it's a story that dives deep into some of its inhabitant and, in particular, the exodus fleet.

The fleet isn't just an interesting part of the story's universe, it is also more closely tied with a potential future for us humans on Earth. This made me feel able to relate more with the characters in this book over the others. The relationships between the characters, especially the ones with the kids, enhanced that relatability.

The only issue I had is that there were a lot of intertwined stories and a lot of unfamiliar, yet similar names (e.g. Kip vs. Kai) and I found my self having to concentrate to switch contexts between the storylines.

This book does some world-building in the Exodus fleet, which was only ever mentioned as a thing that existed in the previous books. I liked this very gentle book, following several people in the fleet, whose lives all intersect eventually. I particularly enjoyed the extended epilogue that makes sure every one of their stories has a happy ending

This is Becky Chamber's third book in her exploration of the Universe she has created.

Of the three books I found this the hardest to get into. It was very character driven like her previous books, but it just seemed to be very scattered in its approach.

‘The long way to a small angry planet' (her first book) was focused on the crew of a spaceship. It was a team exploring the Universe together, interacting together and sharing their experiences.
‘A closed and common orbit' (her second book) was two storylines of two characters that live together so there was a mixing of experiences and communication between those characters.
This book has a range of the characters that it explores. Some are linked to each other, others have absolutely no relation to others at all. Well apart from living within this spaceship fleet orbiting a sun.

Having finished the book now I can understand what it was communicating, why it was created, and what it was saying about it's characters, but it just was nowhere near as compelling as the first two books. She still has written a fascinating exploration of society and people within it, but it lacked the hook that gripped me in the first 2 books.

Although I liked the two previous books in this series, I'm afraid this one lost me. I read a good chunk of it, nothing much happened, and what little happened was generally rather downbeat. I gathered from reading other reviews that the rest of the book is much the same, so I lost interest in reading on.

This is a hard one to rate. It took me ages and ages to read. I kept leaving it and coming back to it and in the end I have to say I really liked it.

It's the third novel in the same universe. Rather than follow any particular character or sorry as the previous two did this seeks to explore the Exodus fleet which in the future is the remaining heart/home of humanity.

It is not so much that nothing happens as in there is no real obvious plot although by the time you get to the end you can see there was one in the background.

I suspect I would have enjoyed this much more had it not been for the pandemic. The sudden lack of life in general didn't lend itself to books without a clear plot.

This is perhaps closer to a 3.5 stars but for the moment it's sitting with a 3.

This was a little slow for me to get into at first–there are a lot of POVs and at first it's not clear how they're all connected–but once I was on board I was really here for it. I loved seeing everyone gradually come together and just learning about the different future cultures. It made me feel so optimistic which is HARD THESE DAYS.

This is the third in Chambers's “series” but like the other two it's standalone. I will always recommend starting with the first one (Long Way to a Small Angry Planet), but this one my be my favorite so far.

I'm trying to wrap my head how she can keep everything so human in space. You think about science fiction stories and the problems are always new ones, or focussed on what's different, but Chambers chooses to focus on what's the same. What doesn't change when we go into space.

There will always be bored teenagers, parents who struggle to lift their kids as they get bigger, naivety, brashness, braggarts, thoughtfulness, selfishness, life, and death.

I loved learning about the Fleet and its inhabitants. And like most of my favorite fiction, it gives me hope.

Chambers continues to prove herself one of my fave authors. Quiet, yet impactful. Interpersonal relationship forward and simultaneously stunning level of thought into how generations of humans on spaceships would live, thrive and manage changing times. Coming to expect a gut punch in books of this series. Best evidence for solarpunk ≠ utopia - it's not an end to problems, but it comes with a better outlook in seeking solutions. A source of hope.