What I Read: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

I was really, really angry about this book.

Given the state of science fiction these days, I should clarify what I wasn't angry about:

I wasn't angry about a huge variety of characters and alien species with different ideas about gender (as well as biological sex) or cultures generally. On the contrary: I was angry that all of those cool ideas about different languages and culture and gender were hampered by a writing style that I would describe as "aggressively twee."

I was angry at Kizzy. Just. Everything about her seemed to be the worst kind of pander-y fanservice (but what a time to be alive, that fanservice can be more than just "wank material for straight dudes"...!). Other characters ranged from kind of cool and interesting to inoffensively bland, but Kizzy was The Worst.

I was angry at a romance that developed out of nowhere.

I was angry at how much was "showing and telling" rather than "showing not telling." Around a third of this book could have been taken out and the story would not suffer at all for it.

As one GoodReads review puts it, putting out a negative review of this book feels like "publicly kicking a kitten," but there you have it. Consider this kitten publicly kicked.