Wayfarers Series

Wayfarers Series

by

Completed: August 11, 2021
★★★★

“We cannot blame ourselves for the wars our parents start. Sometimes the very best thing we can do is walky away.”

Sorrow was the right thing to feel when there were two doors in front of you and you knew that one of them was going to stay closed.

I’ve now read all four novels in the series so far - The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet; A Closed and Common Orbit; Record of a Spaceborn Few; and The Galaxy and the Ground Within. I am tempted to give it 5 stars, but I’ve refrained from doing so on the (perhaps ill-advised) idea that 5 stars is for ‘life changing’ books. After reading all four novels, I give it a solid 4 stars - would have considered even 3 stars, but it’s just such a fun read; and the first novel is particularly great that 4 stars it is.

I can’t claim the first novel has changed my life, but it is an incredibly enjoyable read almost from first page to last. It was just so much fun. Reviews appear to frequently mention “feel-good science fiction” and “breezy television writing” and I can’t exactly disgaree with such characterizations (though I mean these as a good thing). Highly recommended. A quote from the first one.

She would never, ever understand the idea that a child, especially an infant, was of more value than an adult who had already gained all the skills needed to benefit the community…. The death of a child about to feather, yes, that was sad. But a real tragedy was the loss of an adult with friends and lovers and family. The idea that a loss of potential was somehow worse than a loss of achievement and knowledge was something she had never been able to wrap her brain around.

I didn’t quite enjoy the second one as much - it felt a bit too preachy and faux philosophical, but the third one seems more a return to the style of the first so far. That said, I’d still recommend reading the second one for sure (but definitely start with the first - even though the second doesn’t quite depend on knowing what happens in the first). An example quote from the second one.

“I’m so scared. I’ve always been scared. And I’m so tired. I’m so tired of always being afraid. I just want - I just want to have people. I want somebody to make me dinner. I want a doctor to look at my leg and tell me to my face that it’s okay. I want to be - I want to be like you. I want to live on Mars with a family and go on vacations. You - you both always - always said the galaxy was a wonderful place, but it’s fucking not. It can’t be, if it’s got places like this one. If it’s got people who make people like this.” She pointed at her sun-scarred face, her bald head. “Do normal Humans know? Do they even know this planet is here? Do they know that any of this is going on? Because I’m going to die here.” Saying the words out loud made her even more afraid, as if putting them out into the world would make them happen. But they were there now, and it was true, “I’m going to die here, and no - nobody will care.”

Or another:

“Life is terrifing. None of us have a rule book. None of us know what we’re doing here. So, the easiest way to stare reality in the face and not utterly lose your shit is to believe that you have control over it. If you believe you have control, then you believe that you’re at the top. And if you’re at the top, then people who aren’t like you… well, they’ve got to be somewhere lower, right? Every species does this. Does it again and again and again. Doesn’t matter if they do it to themselves, or another species, or someone they created.” She jutted her chin toward Tak. “You studied history. You know this. Everybody’s history is one long slog of all the horrible shit we’ve done to each other.”

“It’s not all that,” Tak said. “A lot of it, yes. But there’s good things, too. There’s art and cities and science. All the things we’ve discovered. All the things we’ve learned and made better.”

“All the things made better for some people. Nobody has ever figured out how to make things better for everybody.”

The third one is a return to somewhat less philosophizing, and more story telling. It’s a bit jumbled at first with quite a few (five!) seemingly separate stories running in parallel. But it’s a fun read again. It isn’t as easy to quote as it’s much more about storytelling within context, but just a sample one to whet your appetitite:

There was a difference between being shy and being sequestered. Rarely in history had things turned out well for people who chose to lock themselves away.

The fourth one is a nice sweeping look at a few of the sapient species in this world. It’s definitely a fun read - not as sweeping as the first one, and not as philosophizing as the second one, and a return to the feel-good factor for sure.

A couple of excerpts from the less feel-good parts of the novel:

‘You haven’t fixed anything. You put a stamp and a permit and a shiny coat of paint on an idea that has been fundamentally damaged from day one. You engaged in bloody theft and you called it progress, and no matter how much better you think you’ve made things, no matter how good your intentions are, that will always be the root of the GC. You cannot divorce any of what you do from that. Ever.’

Sorrow was the right thing to feel when there were two doors in front of you and you knew that one of them was going to stay closed.

All book cover images are from Goodreads unless specified otherwise.

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