Summary Chambers

What you liked:

• Individual characters, very character-driven, varied experiences, insight into the different personalities and backgrounds and ‘races’
• Acceptance as a main theme
• Amazing world-building: interesting universe, realistic, positive mindset, feels real
• Space opera without too much negativity
• Fun to read, entertaining, makes us relate to characters
• Light-reading, world-building easy to digest, no info dump, entertaining
• Person who does not enjoy science-fiction: easy to read, species a bit confusing, not too complicated, got very interesting in the end
• Down to earth, not military, not about guns and battles, wasn’t super science-focused, not boring; has its own niche
• Slice of life in space wonderful, overall story, more about the characters and how they came to be there, how they became themselves
• Amazing: touched upon difficulties in the entire universe, not every planet at peace, universe not perfect, but quite close to perfect, lot of peace; not too optimistic but optimistic; not crisis after crisis
• Outside perspectives on humanity hilarious; little moments that get you to think about things we take for granted in our human life; puts things into perspective; outside perspective makes us question the importance of certain things
• Feather-family idea super cute
• Queerness is normalized
• Intercultural relations superb, different species, different ideas of intimacy
• Use of pronouns wonderful, very inclusive, normalized, you want to be polite
• Non-human persons also very understanding, culturally flexible; humans also try to be polite to other species, does not escalate into a fight, positive
• Natural thing: specific pronouns to talk about people; from the very start it is made clear that assuming a gender would be impolite, natural
• Adapted issues from our time to the context of the novel, e.g. pronouns
• Fun to image how the crew members looked like
• Normalized sex and attraction also between same-sex attraction
• Poly species beautiful, sweet
• Rosemary chooses her own family and fate
• Does not shy away from sad moments and serious questions: Are you allowed to hurt somebody if you help them?
• Crew very loyal to each other even if there are differences, responsibility for each other well done
• Species does a thing in a specific way, might make others uncomfortable; acknowledges diversity, Hatchlings ask before they touch Rosemary
• Kizzy best character, wanna be her friend
• Jenks great, funny, imagined to look like Peter Dinklage
• Sissix & Dr Chef were great, no nonsense policy: how humans dealt with their feelings; Dr Chef so passionate about food; Sissix very loveable also when it came to touching; made us very happy
• Dr Chef: father figure, doctor and chef was weird and funny, species development is super interesting
• Kizzy bubbly and a bit naïve but also funny and smart, knows how to handle things, strong female character without the stereotypes
• Rosemary sorta bland compared to the other characters; shy; not that outgoing; maybe because she’s our main focalizer who is told how things go
• “Close and Coming Orbit” also great, less space-ship, more construction workers in space, felt like “Blade Runner” + a heist + YA; great setting
• Amount of detail with which some world-building elements are described: soap-description so good as it was described that neatly
• Writing style is great
• Will pick up the other books, first book felt complete
• Refreshing that the sequel does not cover the personnel from the first book; makes us mad and happy

What you disliked:

• “For me, the novel was perfect”; one major flaw: too much positivity; hero-bias: every conflict is easily resolves, every endeavor is a success, felt too nice, too positive ending for O.
• Storyline concerning with L. and J. hard to understand; human and AI interaction / relationship a bit weird; made one of us uncomfortable
• Glossary would have been nice, or a map? Hard to follow in parts as someone who’s not a regular reader of science-fiction
• Connecting all the different issues effortlessly, the only thing that one did not like was that a more in depth introduction to the species would have been nice; it’s fine without
• Science fiction will never be “my cut of tea”, but the person enjoyed it a lot
• Too many different characters, sort of confusing, makes sense in that context, diversity is great
• Difficult to get into in the beginning, not a great start, too slow?
• “For me it was the perfect thing […] I’m not used to reading perfect books”
• Cover is beautiful ❤
• How do they handle crime? Is there a police? We want more! Give me more storylines!
• Becky Chambers can do no wrong and we love her