To Be Taught, If Fortunate

This was... beautiful. Everything about it was beautiful. From the writing, to the richness of Chambers's imagination, to the in-depth character work - this book was close to perfection. I pretty much finished this in one sitting over just 2-3 hours because I couldn't put it down.

Besides reading, I'm also a bit of an astronomy nut but I've never been much into sci-fi for whatever reason. I first started getting into it after finally picking up The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet recently and thoroughly loving it, so I decided to give this one a go as well and it blew me away.

In her acknowledgements, Chambers disclaims that she's not a scientist which I was honestly pretty surprised by. She weaves in some pretty great science into this work, although granted I'm merely an amateur in astronomy so I wouldn't know if it's perfect science or up to date enough. Later she explains that her mom is an astrobiologist and then that all made sense.

What I particularly loved is how carefully Chambers avoids anthropomorphizing possible alien life or adopting any kind of human-centric view of the universe. I find that too many sci-fi works, especially those that deal with aliens and other worlds, assumes that human-like creatures (by that definition, I mean vertebrates with two eyes, one mouth, one nose) dwell on Earth-like planets most of the time which is pretty narrow and boring for the plethora of possibilities in the Universe. Chambers apparently feels the same way and she blasts these preconceived templates out of the water with this one.

Chambers's writing was also so smooth to read. The scientific bits of this book was delivered with just enough delicacy to be both instructive and enlightening, while also being easy to digest and entertaining. She manages to build these alien worlds (at least a glimpse of them from the relatively short time our Lawki 6 crew spend on these planets) in a way that each brought new things and experiences and lessons to the table. Chambers also manages to weave in some mystery into a story that is ultimately about stepwise exploration. We know Lawki 6's trajectory from the start - they are visiting 4 alien planets/moon that orbit around a faraway red dwarf star - but Chambers masterfully injects an element of mystery and uncertainty that kept me going and propelled me to finish this in one sitting.

As I already knew from Small, Angry Planet, Chambers really shines with her characters. This may be a short novella and there's only a grand total of four characters in the whole book, but we are inexplicably attached to each of them as the story goes on. Ariadne, in particular, is one of the rare protagonists that I can root for and feel so much empathy with, particularly the bit at the end of the chapter Ocean, where she almost succumbs to that astrophysical nihilism and let herself drift away to her death amongst the stars. That was an amazing moment to me and just oh so poignant.

What are you waiting for? Whatever your reading preferences, this book has something for everyone and I'd highly recommend it.