A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2) in The Long Way... To a Common Orbit flash group

Oct 29, 2016 carol. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: my-library-trade, i-am-not-a-robot, my-library, female-lead, hugo, sci-fi, awards-of-all-sorts

I understand that some people weren't fans of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Personally, in my heart of hearts, I kind of suspected they might be suffering from Grinch syndrome,* but I respected it, because there were indeed a few flaws.

This time, I won't keep my suspicions to myself: if you do not find this book enjoyable, you need to witness a little village of Whos holding hands and singing even though you just stole their Christmas Beast.** Or, just possibly, it is completely not you ...more

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Jul 30, 2017 Apatt rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi

“What was the difference between strung-together neurons and a simple bundle of if/then code, if the outward actions were the same? Could you say for certain that there wasn’t a tiny mind in that bot, looking back at the world like a beetle might?”

There are quite a few existential questions in A Closed and Common Orbit, the second book of Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series, which hit the ground running with the award winning The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. I read “Angry Planet” in Septembe ...more

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Apr 17, 2017 MrsJoseph *grouchy* rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, wish-list, buy-this-for-me, library-r, bookclub-reads, 2017-reading-challenges, 2017

http://bookslifewine.com/r-a-closed-a...

I absolutely loved reading A Closed and Common Orbit. I enjoyed reading the sections on Pepper/Jane 23 more than on Sidra/Lovelace but when taken as a whole, I wanted to hug this book!

I felt that A Closed and Common Orbit clearly exemplifies the idea of “if you can't see it, you can't dream it.” That idea is one of the most often ideas brought forward when discussing inclusive and/or diverse actors on TV shows and in movies. I think A Closed and Common Orb ...more

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Aug 26, 2016 Beth rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010s-sff-by-women, sffbc, buddy-reads, sf-by-women

As often happens when I join a group read for a book, come review time my brain's completely lost steam from having thought about it nonstop for a couple of weeks. Apologies for the shorter review.

A Closed and Common Orbit improves on The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in every way. The core group of characters is better, the relationships between them are more convincingly depicted, the story arc is more skillfully put together, and the emotional impact is much stronger.

There are couple of m ...more

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Jan 16, 2017 Bee rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourite, science-fiction, audiobook, classic-sci-fi, recommended-to-me, young-adult, reread

I loved this book very damn much. Listened to it, and read bits of it on our long winding December vacation through the Drakensburg. I loved Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. But this was something more. I don't even want to discuss a single thing here, because it's all too big and my heart still has a little glow in it that I don't want to put out by talking about it too much.

tl;dr a wonderful story about Al and life and perspective. And a wonderful girl surviving against the universe and dogs ...more

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May 27, 2017 fromcouchtomoon rated it did not like it

Childish, mediocre, simplistic. To enjoy this kind of stuff is fine; to raise it above better written, more substantial novels is irrational.

8 likes · Like · see review

Feb 25, 2017 Harryo rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. A Closed Orbit Review:

spoiler alert ** My home is exceptionally quiet and comfy, with thick Persian rugs and a pleasing multicolored color scheme, yet today I actually went to a coffee shop because I did not want be alone with the feelings this book kicked up in me. These tiny reverberations in my body are strange suppressed sobs and wails; and anger in gusts and floods; and yet there’s the tiniest portion of joy hidden way down deep in the bottom part of my heart, all because I want to storm ov A Closed Orbit Review:

spoiler alert ** My home is exceptionally quiet and comfy, with thick Persian rugs and a pleasing multicolored color scheme, yet today I actually went to a coffee shop because I did not want be alone with the feelings this book kicked up in me. These tiny reverberations in my body are strange suppressed sobs and wails; and anger in gusts and floods; and yet there’s the tiniest portion of joy hidden way down deep in the bottom part of my heart, all because I want to storm over to that junkyard planet where Jane 23 (and 64) were being kept, and to liberate all those sweet, innocent little girls enclosed in a joyless room and put to menial labor under the unloving mechanical supervision of robots.

I wanted to liberate ALL of them and to place them in homes where they will be loved and supervised and nourished and hugged and comforted. It seems so hideous to me that humans could make such creatures to be slaves (and of course, American history, which tells me, well, yes, people do enslave, humiliate and torture others.)

Speaking of torture porn, last week I watched the first few episodes of “The OA”. At first I thought it was an artistic testament to the complexity of the human imagination while positing a condemnation of scientific expediency. For a while found myself musing that Hap is a monster, made by the same institutional trainings that teach immunologists to kill animal subjects by the dozens, merely for having outlived their usefulness. (Don't argue about this: I saw my MIT-trained biologist ex snapping the necks of unused mice like a psychopath.) No one who knew about this kind of behavior would think otherwise, and then there was that episode where it turns out that his friend and counselor, Leon--far from being a friend who succored him without knowing of his monstrosity--was not only performing the same monstrous acts, but doing them in a comparatively worse way. The human monstrosity morphed from the fictional “scientists who torture their subjects” to “creative beings who conceive of these fictional torture scenarios for the audience’s contaminated enjoyment”. More and more I’m looking for people who exit the torture/humiliation mode and step towards the elevation of the spirit. Becky Chambers is a great place to start. It's clear she has hope for the future, in spite of what we know about our present and libidinous past.

I wanted to love this book as much as I loved the first in the series, which was always going to pose a problem because A Long Journey to a Small, Angry Planet was insuperbable, albeit without being technically perfect. (Sadly, it suffered from a kind of errancy of plot, which if you think about it, is actually kind of clever considering this series is named after the spaceship The Wanderer.)

In the first book my sense was that this writer wanted to create "an ideal culture" (as in: “an ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift” ~ Margaret Mead). It would be a sort of intergalactic marketplace where sentient beings of differing aspects, languages, cultures and assumptions would have learned to overcome their innate instinct to recoil from what does not look like themselves and to cohabitate and communicate peaceably and with respect. In fact, respect (and caring) might well be the main OS for the entire Wanderer universe.

Immersing myself in this type of future society is especially uplifting in the wake of the Pussy Grabber & Co.'s political scheme of sending gays and transgender people back to the 1950s, just one in a series of many decisions to "purify" America, i.e. to "make it great again". Personally I think stepping backward in time won't make us great again. Rather it'll just make us backward. But hey, we get backward socially and we cut a bunch of education initiatives, and then we cut infrastructure (all the while paying for the Pussy Grabber and his family to fly to Abu Dabi to do shopping mall deals that will net them millions) and pretty soon China and India will own us. They’ll send American industry to cheaper places, there will be bread lines and rioting (because of course the rich will have us at each others’ throats) and then we will be like Haiti after the kleptocrats siphoned off state funds so there were no roads to drive on. Those poor Haitian kleptocrats wanted to drive around their country to show off their ill-gotten gains in the form of Lamborghinis and Porsches, but they couldn't because the road repairs they skimmed went into their pockets. Instead, they had to be driven around in big ugly SUVs. If we don't pay attention, that's our future. That junkyard planet is our future, while the billionaires in the government end up on faraway islands or on private mountains, or in gated/domed cities of their making, thinking: America is for shitheads, leave it behind.

So, this book.

I'm glad it wasn't perfect, because I often think of what Elizabeth Gilbert said in "Big Magic" about writing a second book, even if it isn't perfect, because you don't want to get stuck in a trap like Harper Lee did and write the perfect first book that could never be followed by a second one.

But actually in some ways it was more satisfying. It showed exquisite character development in a way that many writers try and few succeed at. For example, of the two parallel stories Jane’s was by far more interesting. Jane herself was consistently in line with her fate. I do not believe in free will; we are creatures predetermined by our genes, aptitudes and circumstances. Jane was just plain extraordinary: Jane 23 could run faster than every other Jane, she was the "most best" at fixing small bits, she was curious, and lucky and fated from the outset for greatness. Watching her grow up, and flex was profoundly emotional and chilling and disgusting. She grew imperfectly but constantly. She felt awful, and complained, and swore, and hurt herself. She fell down and cursed herself and her Superego spoke to her in a way that was utterly consistent with her foundation, but she picked herself up and kept on going. I used to think Carrie (of Sex in the City Fame) was just unbelievable, so much luck! But no, what she had was fortitude. She just kept on going no matter how often or how hard she fell on her ass. Jane was the same. Nothing stopped her for long. Not starvation, or brutality, or loneliness, or pain.

As a reader, I was aware I was reading it both for pleasure and as a writer, watching technique. Both of these readers were satisfied: me the reader adored the hard-won, soft and gooey epilogue. It was utterly earned, and when the characters all finally came together, it was a smooth seam into a the final act. Me the writer was inflamed by Becky's decision to break up the character arcs of two separate characters. It wasn’t more successful because there was so much less jeopardy with Lovelace than with Jane. Jane’s existence was threatened on every page whereas Lovelace slouched around whining about how hard everything was and trying to chat up species of indeterminate sex(es).

Last but not least, I know practically nothing about computers, code, or electronics in general, thus I am astounded how not only did Becky Chambers create believable, concrete technology of the future, but also to make it comprehensible to me. Me! ...more

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Mar 14, 2017 Paul Sparks rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Just as charming the second time around. I'm really looking forward to her next book. ...more

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May 03, 2017 Emily rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017, science-fiction

I liked this one more than the first in the series (I'm not sure if that's exactly the right word. You don't have to have read the first to read this one, but it adds to the story). This author has a fabulous imagination, and it shines in her world building and characterization.
There were two storylines to follow this time, and I liked having the focus narrower than it was in the first book. She switched back and forth between them more rapidly than I liked, but I still cared about each charact ...more

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