No reader wants to leave a novel unfinished, especially not a really atmospheric one from an author that you’ve already read a couple of novels from. Back during my binge-reading phase in 2018-20, one of the many cool authors I stumbled across was the sci-fi author Becky Chambers and I read both the first and the second novels in her “Wayfarers” series. So, when I saw that a copy of the third novel – “Record Of A Spaceborn Few” (2018) – was going cheap second-hand online, it seemed like a no-brainer.
Still, whilst this certainly isn’t a bad book by any stretch of the imagination, it just wasn’t the right book for me at the moment. I reluctantly ditched it after 116 pages (out of 358). Part of getting back into reading this year has been avoiding “binge-reading” and not “pushing myself to read”. Not treating reading as a “productivity” thing.
As such, novels sort of need to have gripping and focused plots to keep me interested in reading these days. This novel, which is much more about characters and atmosphere than plot, just didn’t have the “grip” to it that I seem to need at the moment. I noticed myself just not reading it for days at a time, even if I enjoyed myself when I did read it. Still, to maintain my interest in reading, I realised that I’d have to move on…
(Click for larger image) This is the 2019 Hodder & Stoughton UK paperback edition of “Record Of A Spaceborn Few” (2018) that I tried to read.
Although this seems to be a stand-alone novel, some parts of it take place at the same time as the events of the first “Wayfarers” novel. The story follows various beings living on the Exodan Fleet – a “Battlestar Galactica”-esque fleet of generation ships, but with the utopian culture of something like “Star Trek” – that left Earth a long time ago. And, whilst the story begins with the aftermath of a dramatic crash involving one of the fleet, it mostly just focuses on the everyday lives of several characters living on one of the ships.
One of the first things that I will say about what I read of this novel is that I cannot praise the world-building, atmosphere, characters and just general mood of this novel highly enough 🙂 It feels “realistic” but in a slightly rose-tinted way which allows for lots of heart-warming moments. Seriously, if you want a sci-fi series with a heart, I cannot recommend the “Wayfarers” books highly enough! It also doesn’t surprise me that this novel was nominated for a Hugo Award because, like the previous two “Wayfarers” books, there is a fully-built galaxy here with lots of innovative details and interesting characters. It’s a unique and original sci-fi series.
Still, again, there’s the problem of plot and focus. Whilst the first “Wayfarers” novel focused heavily on the characters, it took place during a long space voyage with a fixed destination. Things kept progressing. The second novel also had a bit more of a focus, with all of the parts about a young character being stranded on a planet and being raised by an A.I. On the other hand, I was over a hundred pages into this book and – aside from the crash at the beginning – nothing much had really happened. There were lots of different characters and they just sort of went about their dull and ordinary everyday lives.
Yes, I get that this was probably a deliberate artistic choice. A more “down to Earth” sci-fi story that focuses on ordinary characters and everyday life, rather than on grand cosmic adventures or whatever. And it is really well-written in some ways – again, I cannot praise the atmosphere, characters and mood highly enough – but, as mentioned earlier, I seem to need gripping and focused plots in order to maintain interest in novels at the moment. The failing is as much mine as it is the author’s.
Still, there are tons of cool details here – with the ships having a hexagonal structure, a whole segment about funerary practices in space, the way that archivists have an almost priest-like status in the fleet, all of the fascinating food etc… And I loved how I still remembered a ton of details from the first two books (eg: the Aandrisks and Harmagians, the different galactic languages, how “GC” is an abbreviation for “Galactic Commons” etc...). About the only fault I could find with the world-building were a couple of fairly obvious “info-dump” chapters thinly-disguised as lectures or conversations.
Again, this is a novel that is about people and places, and – info-dumps aside – what I read absolutely excels in this regard. If you like the “world” of the first two “Wayfarers” novels, then seeing more of it is always a cool thing. But, whilst I definitely found myself relaxing with this novel sometimes, I really do seem to need stories with gripping plots these days. So, this year at least, “Record Of A Spaceborn Few” (2018) really wasn’t for me. Which is a shame because, again, it is NOT a bad book. It’s just a slightly slow-paced one that focuses more on characters and on everyday life than on having a dramatic thriller plot or anything like that.
If I had to give what I read – about the first third of the novel – a rating out of five, it would probably get a four. Yet again, it’s really atmospheric… but not something to read if you need a gripping plot to keep you interested.
