To become a home.

 

English edition.

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers.

So… I wasn’t expecting this at all. Book 2 of The Wayfarers Series was very different from the first one, I am guilty of imagining a more episodic narrative following the crew and, boy I was wrong!

Becky Chambers maintains her previous themes and shapes them differently in a bold move. This was an introspective story, having more meaningful interactions with fewer characters. You get to see the parallels in the different journeys by ex-Lovelace, now Sidra and Pepper jumping timelines until matching at the end. It was a focused and polished narration.

You may ask now, what great and shocking events happen here. Well, nothing spectacular in a way, event-wise, there burden of conflict is mostly internal; of the themes managed, here identity and connection have a major prevalence. Coming along the adjustment process of Sidra, now having an autonomous body, “the kit”, and her trouble feeling it as part of herself. Is it? Should it be? How a different body changes her perspective of herself and how others perceive her, how interacting with the world is different and the limitations that now she has to navigate. That said, poor AI had a crashed course of huge changes in so little time, luckily there is Pepper by her side, helping and sharing an understanding and openness result of her own story, the other timeline. It was here that I felt very touched, it is a heartfelt story, not that Sidra´s timeline isn’t, it is a very interesting timeline also, but Pepper´s journey ticked all the chewy spots, her loneliness, despair, struggle and when she found a lifesaving and wholesome connection, it was in an unexpected place.

Random mumbling.

It wonders about the limits of humanity and identity, on how what we consider a human characteristic isn’t exclusive of humans and not something you find in everybody. If you think a bit more about the themes, they turn out not to be that simple and have a lot of room to explore and I think it is brave and brilliant to have hope in a cynical world and trying to imagine better futures.

I had a weird reaction to the ending. Spoilers here, of course. Owl´s solution at having an embodiment felt weird, you can’t avoid to ask, how a box (a big box, but still) is a nice choice, even if she had, as Sidra, a ship as a body before, but the thing I thought was that getting back to the themes at hand, the openness of imagining another being´s experience as different and equally important, maybe is the point. End of Spoilers. To recognize the choices, liking and experiences of others not only as valid, but that those can give you, in turn, opportunity to grow. Nice thinking, huh?

And then...

I felt deeply satisfied with the story and had a shift in my perspective of the books, sneaky marvelous author. What surprises Becky Chambers has stored for us next? I am excited to find out.