Review: Record of a Spaceborn Few

Record of a Spaceborn Few

by Becky Chambers

Harper Voyager, 2018

Adult Science Fiction

8 cups of tea out of 11

Summary: This isn’t really a sequel to either of the previous books written by Becky Chambers but one of the characters has a connection to one of the crew in the first book. This book focuses on a group of humans still living on the ships in the Exodus Fleet. These were the ships that carried humans out into space when they decided to abandon Earth generations ago.

Likes: I spent most of this book fascinated by the Exodus Fleet: how their society works, different systems like trade, funerary rites, education; why they built their ships the way they did, what their first contact with aliens was like. Then by the middle I was attached to the characters enough to have them carry me the rest of the way.

Dislike: It took me multiple chapters to get attached to one of the five character viewpoints and with two of the others it took most of the book before I was attached.

Overall I like this book more than the second companion novel, A Closed and Common Orbit, but I still like the first one, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, the most.

Content

Language – Mild, some swearing throughout

Sexual – Mild, there’s innuendo, allusions to sex, but there aren’t any sex scenes