A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers (Harper
Voyager, 2017). Despite being a sequel to A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet,
this story stands beautifully on its own. Through alternating flashback and
present points of view, two characters embark upon very different journeys with
the same question: what does it mean to be a person?
Sidra was once Lovelace,
an AI controlling a space ship. Now she finds herself in an artificial body
that in most ways mimics that of a human woman. She’s cut off from the multiple
audio and visual inputs that have defined her world, besieged by physical sensations
and social expectations, and at risk of exposure.
Her guide and companion,
Pepper, has a troubled and traumatic past as a cloned child-slave. Chance and
luck freed her, then ten years old, from a factory where she sorted and
repaired trashed equipment, then led her to a buried spaceship, whose AI
provided her with the only loving parenting she had known. Pepper’s past
struggles beautifully mirror and inform Sidra’s present quest.
Sympathetic
characters, fascinating alien cultures, nicely paced action, and understated
depth mark this as a book to savor and re-read.
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