The Galaxy and the Ground Within (Wayfarers #4) by Becky Chambers

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
A Closed and Common Orbit
Record of a Spaceborn Few

The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers is the fourth (and according to the author's website, final) installment in the Wayfarers series. If you are on the fence about science fiction because it's all written by white dudes, give Wayfarers a chance. If you like the structure of a romance novel and its happily ever after ending, give Wayfarers a chance. If you like good, easy to read writing, give Wayfarers a chance.  I am slavishly devoted to Becky Chambers and cannot wait to see what happens with her career.  

In this novel, we find ourselves at the Five-Hop One-Stop on the planet Gora. Gora is a waystation between wormholes for popular planets, but there's a disruption in the solar and communication satellites and we find ourselves reading about the Five-Hop's two owners and three visitors as they wait this technological collapse out.  

There's no real plot here. We're just following these people as they live day to day.  Chambers has built a world of different species, each with its own physical needs and each with an introduction into the galaxy that has created long-lasting wounds and trials. And within that, there's tension. So while this book has a happy ending, I don't want you to think that there's absolutely no conflict here - the characters do not all get along all the time and that adds to the realism of what would happen if five strangers were suddenly thrown together in a tight space.

I have nothing bad to say about this book. I read over the course of two days and loved every second in the world. I added the entire four-book series to my wishlist because I could see myself rereading these books whenever I have a bad day. Huge thumbs up.

Lines of note:

1) "Tupo was still so soft, so babylike in temperament, but had finally crossed the threshold from small and cute to big and dumb. Nothing fit right and everything was in flux." (page 9) 

Being a teenager is terrible, isn't it?

2) "He was aware that all civilised life ran on machines and constructs. Such things were the bedrock of his work, and he knew this truth well. But possessing the intellectual knowledge that infrastructure can break was a far cry from watching it break in real time." (page 53)

I think about infrastructure falling apart all the time. This is leftover trauma from being in Minneapolis when the 35W bridge collapsed merely miles from my location at the time. I am constantly worried that everything is just going to fall apart now.

3) "He knew there would never be a point in his life in which he knew everything there was to know, and while part of him despaired at the puzzle that would never be solved, the rest of him embraced this truth fully, for what satisfaction cold there be in having nothing else to ask?"

The smartest people I know ask the most questions because they know, absolutely know, that they know so very little.

4) "What each species took away from her wasn't important. The only thing that mattered was that they felt welcomed." (page 323)

I read this on the same day I listened to the Harry Potter and the Sacred Text podcast (Series 2, Book 1, Chapter 8, Belonging) in which the hosts basically suggested that welcoming is equivalent to making folks feel like they belong and then this quote came up and now I'm redoing all of the times I've welcomed people into my life and wondering how I could have done better.  I'm running a bunch of meetings in the next couple of weeks and I'm going to make the "Welcome" part of the agenda more than just a bullet point to get through.