Anyone who has been following my reviews here for any length of time will know that I love Becky Chambers’ books. That’s love all in capitals with a heart for the O and squiggly lines drawn around it with a glitter pen. In fact my second review for Sci Fi & Scary way back in summer 2018 was for one of her books. Dear Diary, I gave it five stars because her words make me swoon. I’m giving this latest one five stars too because it’s just as beautiful and life affirming as all the rest.
‘The Galaxy and the Ground Within’ is the fourth (and sadly, last) of Chambers’ ‘Wayfarers’ series. Like the previous three books, it’s wonderfully gentle, character-driven science fiction. These are books about what it is to be human, which is ironic as there are no human characters in it. Chambers has created a phenomenally convincing and vibrant universe in the books, and this book provides a satisfying conclusion, rounding off some themes that have persisted throughout the series.The
The book is set on at a stopover point on a small planet at the nexus of the several intergalactic spaceways. When a disaster means no-one can enter or leave the planet, the owner of the waystation and her child find themselves with unexpected long stay guest in the form of a number of travellers of different alien species.
The plot is limited and the book often feels more like some kind of futuristic soap opera than it does a traditional sci fi novel. If that sounds like a criticism it isn’t meant to, this is speculative fiction of the highest order. Chambers uses her impressive imagination to write about topics that impact every one of us on a daily basis. Sexuality, identity, cultural prejudices, the weight of history. All are covered here and covered brilliantly. It’s a warm, funny, sad, beautiful work that entertains while it informs. If you’ve never read Becky Chambers books, then please do, you won’t regret it.

I was a little sad going into this knowing that it's the last Wayfarers book, however as expected I found a charming story focused on character development. It's very much a slice of life book, with the events taking place over just a few days, following several different characters. As much as I loved this, I feel it will suffer in comparison as it just doesn't quite live up to her other books. Now, it's still a fantastic book and I adored it but I felt a little let down that this was the final book and the ending in particular felt a bit too rushed to me. We had a lovely time getting to know all the characters then just get a tiny glimpse of where they head to afterwards and I would have liked a bit more of that but at the same time, I think I'll always want more of her writing as it's just warm and cosy for the soul.

Becky does it again!

Becky Chambers is one of the best writers currently on the block and with this novel she perfectly brings to a close one of the best series of the decade. One of this authors greatest strengths has always been the creation and narration of alien characters. She doesn't just give upright bipeds weird looking faces but she really goes to town with all the ways alien life might be different and the ways in which this might affect their interaction with the world and with each other. This really comes to the fore in this book, which apart from a brief moment, features all alien characters. However, throughout the whole book, the author weaves together a tale of the very things that make us the same, and bring us together not divide us. A timely message in these troubling and divisive times. I cannot recommend these books highly enough, to anyone really, regardless of whether science fiction is your thing or not. They are filled with heart, and life, and joy and some of the most wonderful characters you would ever want to meet. I'm sad to say farewell to the 'Wayfarer' series but very excited to see where the author will take us next.

Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for the e-arc.

I really needed this book, I had no books to pick up that I was excited to read, and had no escape from uni deadlines, and this was dropped on my lap and saved the day.

I've loved every book in this series, and this one is no exception. I didn't realise this was the last in this companion series, and I'm sad about it, as I feel I could read about this world book after book.


Characters

All the characters (par 1 human minor character) were all aliens, and it was something I've wanted to see Chambers do with this series for a while. I loved learning about the different alien cultures and them interacting with each other without a human there to speak for our experience. Chambers is truly inventive with the bodily needs and functions of the different species, as well as their social culture, yet makes each person in the novel individual and not a stereotype of the race she's invented. It was also fun to see more of Pei from the first novel!

I love the intense character study of these novels, and how the author can make me care so much about everyone in her ensembles.


Plot

The plot is rather stationary, and in this case, about a group of people trapped on a lone planet for a short period of time, and the bonds they grow between one another. It forced people from different walks of life together to bridge understanding, there is conflict in this novel, and each character has distinct motivations and drives for wanting to get off the planet, but the novel is about how they spend the time while they're forced to be there. I could never write a book like this without boring my readers, but I was enraptured by Chambers prose throughout.

One of my very favourite tropes in science fiction is when a disparate group of sentient beings are thrown together in a crisis, which then reveals the commonalities and divergences between them.

Becky Chambers does it brilliantly, and although I love the Wayfarers series I have to confess this is my favourite book of hers so far.

Smart, thought-provoking, funny and interesting - I cannot recommend this highly enough!

If there is one series that I will always praise highly it has to be the Wayfarers series. Becky Chambers has found a unique way to look at people's lifes in a science-fiction setting and manages to play with your heartstrings.

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within does this well. I'll be honest and say that I was somewhat hesitant about this book as I started. All the main characters were aliens and I wasn't really sure what I was getting myself into. But I should not have worried. Becky Chambers effortly weaves a story where all the main characters find piecies of themselves and the others as they are stuck at the Five-Hop One-Stop. There is a way in which these characters come together that makes you feel so incredibly attached to them. Except when they were dissing cheese. You cannot diss cheese, aliens.

Where books 2 and 3 differ a bit from The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by plot and setting, this book 4 retains the same feeling as the first book. While it is always about the characters with Becky Chambers, it is most prominent in book 1 and book 4 of this series. The backdrop of being stuck in one place with one another, where one has to deal with the negative and the positive of each person (and even judgemental views) creates a great way to dive into these characters. How can you come from such different places and still come together? The host who has turned her back on her own species to teach her son how to live within a multispecies galaxy, the rule following soldier who is breaking a cultural rule, one part of a twin who has to deal with all the stares as her species is so widely judged without being known, and one exile who is desperate to make his appointment.

So yes The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is another spectacular read. Not for the plot but for the characters that find each other.

I absolutely love Becky Chambers’ writing and this did not disappoint. In the final instalment of the Wayfarer series we meet 3 travellers who become stuck in a rest stop after an accident means they’re grounded for a few days and must interact when they weren’t expecting to. It’s so beautifully written and the characters are all wonderfully complex and I loved all of them as their histories and personalities were revealed through the story.

It seems impossible that it’s six years since Becky Chambers genre defying The Long way to a Small Angry Planet was released. I do love a bit of space opera, and this book, although filled with an imaginative array of otherworldly species and all the action and political intrigue a space opera fan could desire transcended the genre. I’ve read the other books in her Wayfarers series since and enjoyed them all, but the first book remains close to my heart.
The Galaxy and the Ground Within is the final book in the Wayfarers series and in some ways completely different to the first. There is a familiar character in the form of Pei, but everything else is different. For one thing this book is not set in space but on a planet. In many ways a poor excuse for a planet, one that hasn’t managed to produce life itself, a single rock circling a lonely star. However it’s conveniently placed at a crossroads in space and therefore has carved out an existence as a place for ships to stop, refuel and while away some time. While away time at places like Ouloo’s. She runs a rest stop, where shuttles moor up and their inhabitants eat, bathe, shop or simply wander her gardens while waiting their turn to use a tunnel across the Galaxy. It’s hard to style a place to appeal to so many different potential guests with different needs, diets and customs, but she does her best. At the beginning of the book she has three guests. Roveg, an insectoid exile far from home with an appointment he cannot miss. Speaker, a space rover, who has left her beloved twin sister far above back on the ship, who can only leave her shuttle wearing a suit that enables her to breathe the methane her species need to survive, and Pei, on her way to meet her lover, a human whose existence she hides from everyone else in her life. Each of these people have somewhere else to be. So when their satellites and comms are knocked out leaving them stranded and with nothing to do but talk to each other, it’s feels like a disaster. But gradually this small group of strangers get to know each other and realise that maybe they’re not that different after all.
This is a book about what we can teach other, about small kindnesses and understanding, about listening and learning. It is beautifully written, delicately placed and absorbing. A fitting end to a beautiful series.

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is the fourth book in the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers, but it can be read as a standalone. I think reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet helps with the scene setting though. Firstly, can we talk about the cover? This series has amazing covers but this one is probably my favourite.

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within follows a small number of characters: Pei, a cargo runner we have met in previous books, Speaker, who becomes separated from her sister for the first time during a technological failure, and Roveg, an exiled artist. They are thrown together during the technological failure, stuck with their host Ouloo and her son Tupo.

Like the other books in the series, the world and culture building of alien species is really, really rich. Becky Chambers thinks of everything – from approach to gender to parenthood to biology, Becky has it covered. This book brings together those culture differences more than the others, with the central characters having different perspectives on the world they live in. None of the characters are human, which makes for some really funny jokes for a human reader.

I put this book up with my favourites of all time. Each book in the series brings something different – this one has really special characters who I loved so much that the book made me happy cry in a few places. I really like that Becky gave each one time to tell their story, and made sure the end was satisfying and complete.

Overall, a stunning final book in the Wayfarers series. I am so sad it is over, given that the world is so huge there could be so much more. I am really excited to see what Becky’s new series will be like though! Thanks Hodder and Stoughton for the review copy through NetGalley, this was honestly such a treat.

Cuando tu estado de ánimo no está muy boyante a veces es necesario volver a los lugares que sabes que te harán sentir cómoda y contribuirán a tu bienestar. Uno de esos lugares para mí son los libros de Becky Chambers, son como tomar un chocolate caliente arrebujada en una mantita.


Con esta cuarta entrega de la saga Wayfarers, la autora vuelve a un escenario muy pequeño y restringido, como ya hizo en A Closed and Common Orbit. Toda la novela tratará de la interacción durante un corto espacio de tiempo de tan solo cinco personajes y de estos cinco solo habremos conocido a uno con anterioridad, aunque fuera fugazmente. La estructura de la historia es por tanto minimalista, pero aún así Chambers logra tratar temas bastante universales con ese toque tierno que caracteriza su prosa. Y tampoco descuida la parte biológica a la que nos tiene acostumbrados con las definiciones de la morfología de cada especie representada en la novela, y cómo sus peculiaridades físicas influyen en su comprensión del exterior y, por ende, del resto de especies. Aunque se trata también de un constructo sociológico para que la escritora pueda dar voz a sus inquietudes, representando en las especies alienígenas distintos puntos de vista sobre la sociedad, la familia, las relaciones, la crianza… toda una serie de temas muy importantes y tratados con mucho respeto y cariño, de una forma muy «humana», aunque la presencia humana real en la novela es prácticamente testimonial.

Quizá sea importante destacar la presencia de un joven de una de estas especies alienígenas y el hecho de que se refieran a su persona con pronombres neutros, dando a indicar que cuando alcance la madurez será cuando pueda escoger libremente cuál será su sexo, sea macho, hembra o cualquier otra opción intermedia. Me gusta cómo está tratado este tema con total naturalidad, pero también con cierta intención didáctica cuando en el transcurso de una conversación se habla sobre algunos seres que tratan de influir sobre esta decisión y cómo esto puede resultar confuso para el afectado. Una forma maravillosa de promulgar la libertad de decisión ante las presiones del mundo exterior.

No he contado mucho de la trama porque la verdad, no hay mucha. Hay algunos puntos de inflexión pero realmente sirven para dar un nuevo giro de tuerca y dar a la autora más herramientas para seguir exponiendo las interacciones entre los personajes esta vez con un poco más de presión y urgencia, debido a las circunstancias. Y es que básicamente, los personajes de Chambers son buenas personas, aunque tengan puntos de fricción y por supuesto algún que otro encontronazo, aunque por lo general, todo es muy civilizado.

Aunque he leído por ahí que está era la última entrega de la serie, no descarto que Becky Chambers vuelva a explorar algún aspecto del universo Wayfarers, ya que le quedan cosas por contar.

Becky Chambers is hands-down one of the best sci-fi writers of our time. A first purchase for all collections where SF is popular.

Once again Becky Chambers has restored my faith in humanity. This novel feels like the perfect remedy to the shit show that was 2020 and honestly could not have come at a more perfect time. Her writing has this captivating quality that takes you in it's arms and makes you feel like everything is going to be okay with the world.

The Galaxy and The Ground Within is a very quiet yet profound novel and personally I think it's such a refreshing change from a lot of the high octane sci-fi thillers we get nowadays. The major theme of the book is a contemplation on what it means to accept both others and yourelf, to me this is such a beautiful thing to explore and definetly a lesson I think a lot of the world needs, on treating people who are different from you with respect, grace and kindness.

In terms of plot and characters, we follow a small group of characters (who I absolutely adore, they might be my fvaourite cast of the wayfayers books, although I do also adore the wayfayer crew in the long way), who are all strangers at the start of the novel, but due to unforseen circumstances they are stuck together planetside on Gora. Gora is a planet which doesn't have its own indiginous species, but instead has become a sort of stopover port, in the middle of a wormhole gate system.

The main charcaters we follow are:

Ouloo - Ouloo is the owner of the one stop five hop, a sort of resort for travellers to take a rest on their way to where they are going next, whilst waiting for their turn in the wormhole gate crew. Ouloo is mother to Tupo and is very passionate about making her guests feel welcome and accepted.

Tupo - Xe is Ouloo's child and is one of my favoruite characters ever. Becky chambers perfectly captured the spirit of a pre-teen/teenager who wants to be xyr own person but also very much still needs xyr parent. Tupo is sweet yet mischivous and so curious about the world.

Pei - Another one of my absolute favourites, we have actually met Pei before, as Ashby's love interest. But seeing her on her own and discovering her character as an indivual, her wants and goals, as well as her struggles (paticularly about her relationship with Ashby - which she feels a lot of guilt about) was such a pleasure to read. Her storyline is so beautiful, coming to terms with what she wants for her life and standing up for herself to herself (idk if that makes sense but it's the best way I can describe it!). Also some of the choices she maes towards the end of the book were so impactful and I think will resonate with a lot of women.

Roveg - Roveg is a Quelin, an species which has ostracised themselves from the rest of the GC, who is exile and is very much the glue who holds this fledgeling group together (Pei and Speaker have very strong perosnalities and Roveg is the perfect balance to this). Keeping his own secrets and anxieties about the situation is character arc is very interesting to watch unfold throughout the novel. I also love how respectful and interested he is in other cultures and how fundamentally tied to his character this is.

Speaker - She is another character who I just feel head over heels for, part of the Akarak race, a species we don't know much about, nor do the rest of the GC, Speaker has made herself into someone who is almost an ambassador for her species, however she often feels this burden and wants people to just accept her for who she is rather than who she presents to the world. She is also seperated from her twin sister at the start of the novel and you truly feel her anxiety and love for her sister and wanting to get back to her.

We watch as the characters grow closer in their forced proximity, but also how they clash with one another and their differing world (galaxy?) views. Also how the characters are forced to take a break from their everyday lives and just spend a few days doing very little, just looking after themsleves and the others they are stuck with. This is a very important takeaway, especially with the current work climate of work yourself to death, as well as a reflection on how COVID has forced a lot of us to take a break and maye reflect a little on what we truly want from life.

There are so many beautiful quotes in this book, as well as some really emotional character moments, paticularly around themes of parenthood (which I am always a sucker for). Also some really sweet and wholesome moments, especially around the sharing of food and how that can help bring people together - another theme which resonated deeply with me. Finally there is an element of medicine/healing care which of course I also loved!!!!

In conclusion The Galaxy and the Ground Within is probably tied with the Long Way to a Small Angry Planet for my favourite Wayfayers book, a beautiful novel about where you've been, where you are and where you are going.

This is heralded as the last Wayfarers book, but like the others it’s a standalone novel that can be appreciated on its own (although there is a nice little string of connection back to the first one). I think the thing I like most about Becky Chambers’s books is that they are nice. It’s a word is too often used as a sneer or a substitute for cloying and twee, but it’s the apposite word for the way she shows us the best versions of ourselves, with love, principles and courage as the cardinal virtues. It can be seen in the climax here, where people* who didn’t previously know each other rally around and work with each other to resolve a crisis, despite fundamental disagreements between some of them. A great deal of the book is simply these characters, thrown together and stuck with each other by circumstance (I wonder if it is a lockdown novel?), chatting and getting to know each other. There’s no villain, there’s no fate of civilisation resting on the outcome (the stakes at the climax, while very high, are strictly local), just some lovely character building stuff that also manages to touch on gender politics, the notion of a just war, love across cultural divides and societal expectations of motherhood. Chambers is very good at describing a range of alien physiologies, but if I had one quibble it’d be that maybe she’s not quite so successful at getting across alien psychologies - for all their different body types and cultural backgrounds, the interior life of these characters is something humans can identify with. But I suppose it’s a paradox that a human can’t ever convincingly portray an alien way of thought because we simply don’t have the mental equipment or headspace to do it without human terms of reference. I’ll leave that to the exopsychologists, and just say this is a great book.

*aliens, but you know what I mean. There aren’t any humans in this book, which seems only fair after the last one was pretty much exclusively human based iirc.

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is the final title in Becky Chambers's Wayfarers quartet (although I hope she will return to this world, if not these characters, in future, as there still seems to be so much more to explore!) As ever, it's gentle, character- and concept-driven sci fi, with a satellite accident merely providing the pretext for her four central characters to be stranded together on the 'truck stop' planet Gora. Ouloo and Tupo, a Laru mother and child, run the Five-Hop One-Stop, trying hard to provide appropriate food and facilities for all the different alien races they might encounter. Roveg is an exiled Quelin who builds immersive VR environments, and is keen to be on his way so he doesn't miss an important appointment. Speaker is an Akarak, a race who seem to have drawn a galactic short straw, and is desperately trying to reunite with her twin sister in orbit. And Pei, who briefly appeared in The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet, is an Aeluon who is initially relaxed about the extended stop-over, until something unexpected throws her off course.

I haven't truly adored any of the Wayfarers novels as much as I loved The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet, and this held true for The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. However, it still delivers Chambers's usual thoughtful inventiveness and optimistic take on the future of the universe. I continue to be frustrated that a writer who so flexibly rethinks gender, sexuality and race can't break outside the idea of childhood and adolescence as a universal biological category, and Tupo fell into many of the same teenage stereotypes as Chambers' human character Kip in Record of A Spaceborn Few. Nevertheless, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within still gives us plenty of interesting ideas to chew on. Most of the cast veered close to being a bit too idealised for me, but I loved her complex portrayal of Pei, who is forced to wrestle with questions of just war, reproductive duty and non-conformity. Her narrative strand, for these reasons, was by far the most compelling. In short, though, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within won't disappoint Wayfarers fans, and as ever, I'm excited to see what Chambers does next.

I will post this review to Goodreads and my blog nearer the publication date.

No surprise there.
Yet another beautiful story. I really wish we could have more of this universe. 10 books minimum would make me happy.

This one is closer to the first book in the series : we've got a groupe of people, stuck somewhere for a period of time. They try to deal with their personal stuff while also getting to know each others and helping one another. The difference is that in the first book the crew knew what they were getting into, they knew each others and had knowingly decided to take that year long trip. In The Galaxy, and the ground within, no one chose to be there for more than a night, circumstances put these people together. They also sometimes have prejudice against each others due to their race... But in a complete Chambers' fashion they are never dicks about it.

This story has barely any plot, just like in The Long way(...) except a little something happening at the end (again, like in The long way(...)). I'm positive that if you liked that first book you will love that second one too. But also, if you thought book 1 was too slow... Then this one might not be fore you either.

I loved that Chambers decided to have only aliens as characters in this book. We follow 5 different people of 4 different species and Humans are only mentioned. We got to learn so much from these species, not only how they "biologically work" but their history, their politics. It was fascinating.

After reading this book, more than ever before, I wanted more books in the series. I wanted to know more about the politics especially surrounding Speaker's species. I wish we could have a full book about it... Not fair, Becky.

This reads SUPER QUICKLY. I don't know how long it is exactly but it felt like a novella. I blinked and I had read 50%. How can a book with no plot be such a page turner? I've no idea but I was trying to savor it and take my time but wow it was hard.

I wouldn't know what else to say about this book. It was amazing, it's of course already pre-ordered and it warmed my heart, as always with Chambers' stories. I cannot wait to see where she brings us next.

I think this might be my favourite in the series so far – I am a biology nerd and evolution and xenobiology in scifi really ring my bell! There are no humans here, which is interesting. The cast is comprised of four stranded aliens of four distinct species, each with their own pressing need to get home. As usual, this is intelligent scifi told with warmth and humour, meditating on social interaction and tolerance. I’ve really enjoyed all of the author’s books. While they are not free of conflict, which is a good thing, they are always ultimately kind. Highly recommend.

This was fascinating. It's definitely one for the zoologists out there - there aren't any human characters for most of the story. Instead, four different alien species with incredibly different physiologies are stuck in a small habitat dome together with no communications for a week. All of them have their own desperate reasons for leaving as quickly as possible, but despite their impatience they find themselves fascinated by the differences and similarities between each other's bodies and societies.
Like all Becky's novels, this is incredibly kind-hearted - while it deeply examines every aspect of culture, none of these aliens are mean or bad or capable of commiting the very human type of crimes you might expect from a locked room novel. This was a very tender exploration of all the many ways there are to live, love, reproduce, and cook dessert. There isn't much plot to speak of, but there are lobster centaurs, kangaroo horses, chameleons bipeds and bird sloths. Which more than makes up for the quiet parts, in my book.

Becky Chambers books are always a delight and this instalment did not disappoint. I was completely immersed in the life on the planet. All of the characters were vivid.

The final Wayfarers book – which seems a strange thing in itself, given this always felt much more a setting than a series, even if this volume does resolve one gently dangling plot thread from the first of them, The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet. And given the timing – it's set to come out 11 months after the Event – I'm inevitably curious about whether the ways in which it mirrors lockdown were a direct response, emphasised in late revisions, or sheer coincidence. The setting is a small facility at a wormhole transit hub, where three visitors of various species find themselves trapped with the two hosts after an unexpected catastrophe. The official communiques combine reassuring platitudes – "Thank you for your patience. We are all in this together." – with ever-stretching estimates of when matters will be resolved, in a manner which now feels all too familiar. Likewise the lives and plans put on hold, the people trapped away from family and friends, the sudden reversals of the emotional gradient in relationships, the anger bubbling closer to the surface, the difficulty sleeping as one's brain insists on repeatedly running through the problem despite one's knowledge that one can't do a damn thing to solve it. The poignancy of any reminder of what was: "It was an old memory, a nothing memory, but one made painful by the simple context of what life had once been." Even the guilt at the good moments: "It was odd to be enjoying such things while the sky was on fire." And of course there are good moments, far more than here, because while not without war, jeopardy and death, the world of Wayfarers is fundamentally so much nicer than our own.

An early scene which encapsulates that underlying gentleness is set thus: "The ocean beach was as beautiful as it was every time. The sky above was the pale amethyst of noon. The water below lapped at the shimmering black sand with a tender, rhythmic caress. People of all species milled about, some napping, some swimming, some collecting shells. The beach was lively, but not raucous; peaceful without being dull." True, it's a simulation, but even so, it's a simulation where the wish-fulfillment isn't sex, violence, greed – it's a really lovely beach that everyone can enjoy. Equally, out in the novel's real world, the setting has been very carefully calibrated by its keen owner-manager such that it's as amenable as possible to as many alien species as possible – and despite being essentially a motorway services in space, not once does any of the travellers stranded there have even the faintest grumble about the price of anything cross their mind, because it's being run as an act of cultural exchange as much as a business.

In a sense, Chambers already did something much closer to our current lockdown experience in her non-Wayfarers, far less sunny novel To Be Taught If Fortunate, where the protagonists spend several months trapped in their ship on a depressing planet of rain and slugs. Here, though...I think the moment I felt the gap most keenly was when two characters who've had quite a forceful argument over really quite foundational stuff know in an instant to put that aside when the crisis requires them to work together for the general good. You know, in exactly the way people so spectacularly haven't this year. This isn't a criticism as such – I'm a Wodehouse fan reading a novel about aliens using algae to travel faster than light, I'm not demanding scrupulous realism. But even more so than most reading in the 2020s, it did leave me deeply envious of a world that doesn't exist.

And that argument the characters had? It's over the injustices of the Galactic Commons, a situation whose analogies to injustices back here on Earth are pointed, but not always in ways which quite convinced me. One participant is Speaker, an Akarak – a race who were colonised and enslaved by the former galactic hegemons, the Harmagians. Left with no homeland, they're widely perceived as criminal by nature, and at this point you think, OK, bit on the nose, but let's see where this is going...and then Chambers keeps heaping the disadvantages on them, but most of these don't feel structural so much as just really bad evolutionary luck. So they're smaller than all the other sentient species, and shorter-lived, and the only ones who don't breathe oxygen, at which point the whole thing really falters as any kind of representation of terrestrial racism, where the tragedy is surely the divisions between people of equal potential based on the foregrounding of one tiny detail of genetic happenstance. And when Speaker gets into familiar arguments about how the new, supposedly fairer era of galactic civilisation is just "a less violent period of the exact same cycle", accusing another character's people of having "engaged in bloody theft and called it progress", the parallel doesn't really stand up given there's no direct argument with the Aeluon's rebuttal that her people have "never taken a world from someone, not once", only terraformed wholly uninhabited planets. It's an unfortunate bum note in what's otherwise a nuanced if very optimistic vision of the interactions between different peoples, where the dynamics can be imperfect in all sorts of ways (from well-meaning ignorance, through the embarrassing curiosity of the young, to genuine but not hardened prejudice) but ultimately soluble through curiosity and empathy. I particularly enjoyed the way that, for the first time in the series, none of the leads was human, and that accordingly our funny ways come in for plenty of puzzlement and mockery when we do crop up in conversation (cheese, in particular, is widely assumed to be a slanderous rumour, because how and why would any species even do that?). And not for the first time, Chambers is very good at using various alien sensoria as a brilliant way to talk about neurodiversity, and how exhausting it can be dealing with a world set up on assumptions about how minds work which don't apply to yours.

This also feeds into the work of Roveg, the character who made that simulation I mentioned earlier. Part of the skill of which is making it accessible to different species, so that each can feel their own body-type in there (that nobody has ever bothered to do this for the Akaraks before, and how that's resolved, is moving, and has clear and valid metaphorical intent, even while it sits somewhat oddly with the world we've seen in the previous books). He's an exile from his isolationist race, the Quelin, on account of his being "a known cultural deviant". Yet even here, one looks at the way the Quelin aren't dumb enough to muck with trade; respect common laws; object to inequality; and accept minimal fuss over gender transition – and wish that Trump's America or Brexit Britain could have been this polite and measured when they turned their backs on the world and the future. Still, while even the evil empires here are really quite civilised compared to our own, the character for whom I felt the most sympathy was undoubtedly fluffy, floppy Ouloo, host at the stopover, who knows there are problems in the world, and can't tell what solution is best, so in the meantime has come to a very practical manifesto for her own life: "I want everybody to get along, and I want to make them dessert."

(Netgalley ARC)

Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book is set on Gora, basically a planet which has the sole purpose of being a waiting place for those ships that will enter into the next wormhole and have to wait for authorization for such. We first meet Ouloo and Tupo, a Laru mother and her teenager son, who have an establishment there for those who are waiting. They will receive three guests on the same day: Speaker, an Akarak, Roveg, a Quelim and Captain Tem, aka Pei (also Ashby's love interest), an Aeluon. They were supposed to be there only for a short period of time and the whole satellite network stops working and they are stuck there until further notice.

Well, like in the previous books in the series, we have a plot-driven sci-fi story. We have 5 people from 4 different species trying to get along and get over the cultural barriers between them, so it's really interesting to see how they react and try to understand the culture and biology aspects from each other. Of course, those dialogues make us think a lot about ourselves and our society. I also really like how the author always debates war and explore the different perspectives of it.

The characters are flawlessly built as usual. They all have their quirks, their flaws and the things that make us love them. My personal favorite was Roveg. He's probably the easiest one to love, but I just couldn't help it. Speaker was for me the most complex character, which made me love her sometimes and also annoyed me a bit lol. It was also very good to see more of Pei and understand more of her species and her relationship with Ashby.

The only problem I had with it was that once again, I had a hard time getting into a book of the series. I don't know if the problem is me or the author or maybe both of us, but it always takes me a long time to get into those books, but once I do, it's awesome. Oh, and I also missed some humor in here. I felt like the other books had more funny lines, but it was still fun in some moments.

Overall, it was another great installment for the series.