The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

How it reads

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is science fiction (character-driven space opera, specifically), and its dominant mood is hopeful. Whatever it puts its people through, it believes things can get better. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.

It's set in an international setting, in the future, told in the third person across several viewpoints. Its central concerns are friendship, identity and class and society. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It opens a series. The ending resolves happily. At 518 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.