Paperback, 364 pagine
lingua English
Pubblicato il 07 Agosto 2017 da Hodder & Stoughton.
Once, Lovelace had eyes and ears everywhere. She was a ship's artificial intelligence system - possessing a personality and very human emotions. But when her ship was badly damaged, Lovelace was forced to reboot and reset. Now housed in an illegal synthetic body, she's never felt so isolated. But Lovelace is not alone. Pepper, an engineer who risked her life to reinstall Lovelace's program, has remained by her side and is determined to help her.
Loved the concept, but the story kept hitting the same plot beats. I liked it overall, but it still felt a little disappointing coming off of the first Wayfarer book.
Thoroughly enjoyed the worldbuilding and the story, but I felt like I had to do the work to relate to the characters. They both start off at points in their lives that are unique, interesting - and hard to wrap my head around. The author does a great job giving them distinct voices and letting them grow over time, but I just found them too far removed to really get into the book.
The secondary characters, however! I really loved reading about them from the perspectives of the protagonists, and as always, the interactions are wonderfully crafted.
Chambers is a great author and I love immersing myself into her universes.
i enjoyed A Closed and Common Orbit even more than the prequel one. (which has not enough story to keep up--for my taste at least) i think of it as a kind of double bildungsroman, with two developing characters between which the novel is split.
Chambers connects her scifi(-world) convincingly and smoothly with the problems most of us are facing and can relate to. it's how scifi should comment the present. and although the focus is always on the personalities, there are also a lot of social themes and thoughts.
a lot of readers mention the caring characters throughout the story, which make it so satisfactional to follow. I can support that! but it would be sad to think, it's just another form of escapism, a tweak to the genre. this is a shortcoming of understanding the themes Chambers is working on.
the real impact makes Chambers skill in building …
i enjoyed A Closed and Common Orbit even more than the prequel one. (which has not enough story to keep up--for my taste at least) i think of it as a kind of double bildungsroman, with two developing characters between which the novel is split.
Chambers connects her scifi(-world) convincingly and smoothly with the problems most of us are facing and can relate to. it's how scifi should comment the present. and although the focus is always on the personalities, there are also a lot of social themes and thoughts.
a lot of readers mention the caring characters throughout the story, which make it so satisfactional to follow. I can support that! but it would be sad to think, it's just another form of escapism, a tweak to the genre. this is a shortcoming of understanding the themes Chambers is working on.
the real impact makes Chambers skill in building up and writing emotional scenes. and because i was listening to the audiobook: R. Dulude did a great job on this one (too).
"A Closed And Common Orbit" by Becky Chambers is set in the same universe as "The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet" but follows side characters from the first book.
It took me a while to adjust to the new cast (I was still in love with the old cast!) but once I took a little break and came back to it with a fresh pallet, I really enjoyed it. I particularly liked how much the characters tried to look after each other.
Halfway through this novel, I've go two things to say about it.
First: Becky Chambers is reallly really good at depicting interpersonal relationships, empathy, small communities, people who care about each other. And the fact that this feels so refreshing (and maybe a little naive) is probably not a good thing: if we are not used to see people that care deeply about each other (and about strangers too), maybe the world we live in has a few problems it better face sooner rather than later.
Second: after a successful debut novel, most authors would have taken the safest and easier way: keep the same set of characters and write more of the same. Well, not Becky Chambers. She chose to write an entire different story, with entirely different characters. And yet, the result is a novel at least as good as its predecessor. To me, if you can pull …
Halfway through this novel, I've go two things to say about it.
First: Becky Chambers is reallly really good at depicting interpersonal relationships, empathy, small communities, people who care about each other. And the fact that this feels so refreshing (and maybe a little naive) is probably not a good thing: if we are not used to see people that care deeply about each other (and about strangers too), maybe the world we live in has a few problems it better face sooner rather than later.
Second: after a successful debut novel, most authors would have taken the safest and easier way: keep the same set of characters and write more of the same. Well, not Becky Chambers. She chose to write an entire different story, with entirely different characters. And yet, the result is a novel at least as good as its predecessor. To me, if you can pull something like this off, it means that you're a fully accomplished writer.
TLDR: read this. Now.
A wonderful sequel
This book went an entirely different direction from the first in the series, yet it was just as enjoyable. My favorite part of the book was the structure in which the two stories were told in parallel, coming together into a great finish. Can't wait for the third one!
A wonderful sequel
This book went an entirely different direction from the first in the series, yet it was just as enjoyable. My favorite part of the book was the structure in which the two stories were told in parallel, coming together into a great finish. Can't wait for the third one!
