Mikhail’s Comments (group member since Aug 31, 2016)

Mikhail’s comments from the The Long Way... To a Common Orbit flash group group.

Interestingly, there's some genuine conflict between Exodans and Mars-ites which comes up later on. I found the Exodan flattening effect rather dubious (human history seems to have a pretty strong centrifugal effect on societies), but put it down to a 'Sci-Fi Classic' trope.

I tend to think that's the book's greatest strength. These are totally people you want to be around. They're realistic and fun (and remind me of some of my zanier friends).

Amelia All excellent points, and you're right, the book does show a degree of conflict over it. I do think that Dr. Chef's story kind of swamps all other points, but that's a matter of opinion.

Out of curiosity, what kind of history? My degree is in Russian history, focusing on 19th century Imperial Foreign Policy. Dissertation was on Russo-Bulgarian relations (wars! coups! kidnapping the king!)

Athena I have known people in their mid-thirties with the emotional age of twelve-year-olds, so I didn't find Kizzy that outrageous. Although I find the actual people desperately obnoxious, so...

Actually, Kizzy is one of my favorite characters because she is, on the one hand, a kind of classic "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" archetype, all spazzy energy and life, but she's also treated with some more depth than most of them. She's got her own admittedly strange inner world, she can be scared and sad and seems to have been traumatized by the pirates, and she works through it. I enjoyed that.

Natalia Yeah. I don't want to make too much of the point. I found the book a bit preachy, but it was mild enough that I consider it a venial sin. I will definitely be getting the next book.

For my part, I actually enjoyed Corbin's characterization, and his resolution to Ohan's plotline. It was a difficult choice, but Corbin decided that he would do what he thought he should do. I can respect him for that.

I define preachiness as "unsubtle moralizing." In other words, I consider books preachy if they....

1) Attempt to deliver a moral message to the reader
2) That moral message is not suitably complex/explored in depth
3) The moral message is delivered in an overly blatant fashion (essentially, tell don't show)

Or to put it more crudely, preachiness is when a book has a moral and I don't enjoy it.

Preachiness is by no means the biggest problem with Chambers's book, but it is noticeable. It has a strong anti-war message, but it's a fairly simplistic one (War is bad!), and it's delivered very directly by having Dr. Chef deliver a long speech to Rosemary about it.

This isn't a knock against moral messages as a whole (though I'm jaded and cynical). You can look at the Terry Pratchett books, especially those in the Guards subseries of Discworld, as basically long paeans to Duty and Tolerance and Doing the Right Thing no matter how much it hurts. But Pratchett was an excellent and skilled author so the messages are worked into the books with exquisite skill.

EDIT: I will also add that I am a historian by training, and thus view attempts to position war as some kind of aberration or purely human behavior with extreme skepticism. ANTS have been seen going to war against other ants.

So, just finished, organized my thoughts, and came to find that most of them were broadly explained here, mostly by Athena.

Overall, I liked the book and will get the next one in the series, but it had a bad case of First-Book-Itis. The characters are lots of fun, and Chambers has an excellent ear for dialogue and personality. (I adored Kizzy). The plot was serviceable if, as pointed out, rather abrupt in places (especially towards the end -- I do feel that the book got choppier).

I'd say my biggest gripe is not simply that the book is episodic, but that the episodes seem very self-contained. I thought that Rosemary's secret would be the basis of the entire book... except it gets resolved earlier and mostly vanishes without a trace. Corbin being a clone comes out of nowhere, then vanishes almost as quickly. Pei's ship being sabotaged, also seems to come out of nowhere (no foreshadowing), and then vanishes (no resolution). So the book just felt unconnected, unmoored from each other. I think you could move around a bunch of chapters and the book would still be pretty much the same.

The comparison to the Ketty Jay series once again holds -- it's also mostly a character story about people coming to terms with their own issues and learning to work together, but Wooding is a veteran author and manages to weave all the issues throughout the book.

That's my major gripe. Minor gripes are that it's too preachy (*rolls eyes*) and that the resolution felt kind of... off? Nothing really ends up being done with the Toremi, no explanation. The whole set of scenes with Toum ends up feeling like the buildup to events that never happen.

Still, I think much of this can be attributed to FirstBookItis. And also the job-loss/kickstarter thing. It's choppy, preachy, and lacking in subtlety, but it's also beautifully written, well-designed setting, and extremely interesting characters. If Chambers can fix the first set of things while keeping the second set, she'll be an author to watch.

I will be honest, the end of Cricket and the Last War were my least favorite sections.

<> The entire sideplot of Rosemary's heritage feels at once overdone and underdeveloped. That is to say, on the one hand, "My Father is a Heinous Arms Dealer!" feels overdramatic, overly grand, more the kind of thing that you'd find in a fanfic than in a proper novel. It seemed to jar with the otherwise more subtle, low-key approach of having a group of working spacers. On the other hand, it also seems to have been dealt with too quickly and too easily. This is the kind of thing that ought to be the very center of the plot, but most of the crew is just "eh." About it.

Mind, I expect this to become more relevant once they get to Toremi space, so perhaps that will change my view.

<> Dr. Chef's monologue also felt rather heavy-handed. Yes, we get it, war is bad, pacifism is great, huzzah! I mean, who would disagree with this? (Okay, Terry Goodkind, I'll give you that). But overall it felt like the kind of philosophical musing you'd see from a freshman philosophy major.

<> Also, how sad is it that the single most suspension-of-disbelief shattering moment for me was the idea that a multi-billionaire would actually get arrested and sentenced to prison no matter [i]what[/i] he did. This says more about me than about the book, mind.

I thought it worked reasonably well. It hews fairly close to Sci-Fi Standard (WORMHOLES!), but it's a more detailed than usual examination of that trope, so it works.

I think Dr. Chef has been tagged in my brain now as a six-limbed otter. Which is cute, so I'm going with that.

On a less pleasant note, I will say that while governments are undoubtedly tracking things, black markets have a way of thriving. According to the Global Slavery Index, there are an estimated 58,000 people living in slavery (forced labor of one sort or another) in the United States. And back in the 90s, when the Soviet Union fell apart, there were so many Soviet weapons floating around they're still not all accounted for.

A story I recall from a documentary on the Russian Mafiya. Some London-based mobster thought that the Columbians had a good idea, and called an arms dealer contact of his asking to buy an old Soviet submarine to use for drug smuggling. So the contact asks him, "Do you want it with or without missiles?"

And this is all modern day. Now add multi-species diplomacy and the vastness of space. I'm *certain* that black markets will exist for all things.

Started it, enjoying it quite a bit so far. Someone, I forget who, compared it to Chris Wooding's Ketty Jay series, and it definitely has a bit of that vibe to it.

Language is nice and clear, setting is Standard Sci-Fi without being bland about it. Dr. Chef and Sissix are great, even if I'm still trying to wrap my brain around what Dr. Chef looks like (Sissix has been tagged as 'anthropomorphic archaeopteryx', so that works).

...there's chocolate? SOLD.

Anyway, I am intrigued so I will give it a shot.