I did manage to read this and I have to tell you, it's frakking awesome with a capital A. It helps that I was in the middle of a big life change and needed something light and engaging.
The crew of the Wayfarer are basically the construction workers of the universe. They create wormholes that will be used as shortcuts on the highways of space travel. We begin with the addition of Rosemary, a human, to the crew in the position of clerk. The crew is an stew of different species, all of whom have interesting back stories and multilayered personalities.
The plot moves along really quickly, even the overarching plot of traveling across the universe to a newly recognized alien government to create a wormhole happens in a timely manner. Nothing is drug out here, and while I normally do not mind a bit of introspection, I appreciated the pace. It's just a fun, fun novel.
I think it put me in mind of Farscape, before Farscape went insane with shoving Chiana down our throats. What the frell? That show was awesome until her. So, if Farscape and a distant cousin of Firefly had a baby, it might resemble The Long Way.
I am still new to this genre but I have to mention something I have noticed. Reading Scifi is good for my feminist soul. In scifi, it's not uncommon to run into female captains, pilots, world leaders, etc. Their authority is never in question because of their sex. Never. It's almost as if the future is this place where we have gotten beyond all of the bullshit and are worried about real problems, such as what is the role of the human species in the bigger picture? The Long Way tackles that. It also tackles species coexisting despite finding each others' customs...well...gross. And food source! It lays out the food source.
I was on page 68 when I put the book down to look up the release date of the sequel. It's that good.
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