Cosy hopepunk-ish sci-fi, from one of the authors responsible for the recent popularization of that sort of book. It is, in fact, the fourth (and I believe final) instalment in the series that started with Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. This one is set at an interstellar truckstop of sorts, on a planet with no life of its own that serves as a stopover along several major hyperspace routes. An accident that takes out the planet’s satellite system means that all travel is temporarily suspended, and the owner of the truckstop, her child, and three travellers have no choice but to get to know each other as they wait. Thoughtful. Slice-of-life. Mostly-good people mostly doing their best but sometimes coming into conflict. Stakes that are low in a cosmic sense but not-so-low in a personal sense, though sometimes reflecting larger issues and injustices. Touches on questions of difference and culture and tradition and colonization and desire, but is not overwhelmed by any of those. It has been awhile since I read sci-fi with no human characters on the page (though one of them is in a long-distance relationship with a human we met in an earlier novel in the series), and Chambers does it well. If you’ve enjoyed the earlier books, you won’t be disappointed by this one.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.