The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet + The Murderbot Diaries

These two book series were recommended to me by friends who felt there were similarities between them and Crew of Exiles, my novel.

A while back, my wife asked me to write a cozy, female, space heist novel, sort of Ocean’s 8 meets Firefly, preferrably set in a whimsical starship based on like Howl’s Moving Castle.

I never finished that project, but if that sounds like something you would like to read, then I recommend: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Based on the title, I expected something grim and possibly avante garde, but nothing could be further from the truth. The Long Way is as approachable as a golden retriever.

It’s about a crew of humans, aliens, and sentient AI traveling the galaxy on a lived-in starship, taking jobs, trying to make ends meet and having some minor interpersonal troubles and some slightly larger, more galactic troubles along the way. It’s cozy, friendly, and kind. It’s what you’d get if you made Firefly more mellow, or if you took Star Trek The Next Generation and made it more casual, quippy, and sexy.

There are problems that need to be solved, but they never seem too difficult or threatening. There’s at least one action sequence, but the rest of the novel is rainbows on a puppy’s cheek.

If The Wrong Way Around an Angry Plant had been brought to my writing critique group, I would have criticized it as not having a strong central plot or a clear sense of direction. Yet the popularity of this book shows that those things are secondary to many readers. So who are those readers?

Well, if you liked A Long Trip to a Little Planetoid, Goodreads recommends The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells.

Again, here is a book with a laid-back attitude and a desire for cozy kindness. Murderbot’s first-person protagonist is the eponymous murderbot, who is certainly no Terminator, but instead a chill being who mostly wants to be left alone to watch its sitcoms but has to get involved to help the humans out of trouble.

The Murderbot main character is relatable in its desire to check out of the rat race, to just kick back with some edibles and chill, without worrying about politics or the climate or artificial intelligence or covid variants or…

And likewise, Long Way appeals to our desire for hope. Y’all remember hope?

Interestingly to me personally is that both of these serieses have been recommended endlessly by people who read my book and felt certain that I would love them based on the book that I wrote.

So here’s my Venn diagram. All three are pretty wholesome, very lovable characters, creative science fiction. Murderbot and Exiles tend a little bit toward the darker they have a little bit more action. Long Way and Exiles are both a little bit more philosophical, a little bit more sensory. Long Way and Exiles also have a very direct comparison in that they are about a motley crew on a starship whereas Murderbot and Exiles got compared more closely in terms of pacing and action.

The blurb for The Round Peg in the Square Hole is: “Follow a motley crew on an exciting journey through space… discover the meaning of family in the far reaches of the universe-in this light-hearted debut space opera.”

The exact same thing could certainly be said of Crew of Exiles, so if you liked any one of these three books, consider checking out the other ones. My book is available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

We all want to believe that the world out there is more rainbows falling on a dog’s cheek than it seems at times. These are some books you can read to get that feeling.

But here’s the confession, I wasn’t actually gripped by Long Way or Murderbot. I think that’s because the themes in them are different from the themes that matter to me, the themes that I wrote about in Crew of Exiles, and the similarities that other people picked up on, which are certainly there, weren’t as important to me.

What other people picked up on was the wholesome vibe, the relatively chill experience. These are all books that you can read before bed, largely without fear of nightmares or without fear of being so, like, on edge about what’s going to happen next that you stay up until 3am. That’s a downside for some people. These are not roller coaster books, they’re lazy rivers experiences, but it’s also nice to know that there’s room for that in the reading world.