The problem with being able to listen to audiobooks at my new job is that I read many more books and thus am already so far behind in reviews. Reading is so much easier than writing!
Anyway, I decided to start my year out with a book I was fairly certain would be great. Spoiler alert: It was super great! Becky Chambers is the best and I will read whatever she writes because I want to live in her world for as long as possible with whichever characters she’s chosen.
You don’t need to have read her other two books before reading this one. Different characters, different part of space. I might still recommend reading the other two first because this one takes longer to ramp up and I feel like I’d have been less likely to stick with it without knowing with certainty that Chambers would deliver. (Whatever you do, don’t read book 2 before 1. You can do 1-2-3 or 3-1-2.)
For this one, we’re in the Exodus Fleet aka humans who have lived together on ships since leaving Earth. It’s interesting to see how limited space and resources affected this community. Everything is prized and reused, even the dead. We get to follow many characters during their daily life on the ship: a young man from another part of the galaxy trying to make the ships his new home, a record keeper, some troubled youths getting trouble, etc. Like I said before, it was slow to come together, but the journey was enjoyable and the end ties all the characters together.
Chambers books are all about hope, so hopefully my 2019 reading year is going to be amazing and hopefully I won’t fall too far behind in reviews.
