Enjoyed this story - it had a lot of warmth.
I have to admit, I was fairly upset to realise that Wayfarers book 2 did not continue with the characters I'd grown to love so much from Wayfarers book 1. I'm still secretly hoping to find the crew from the Wayfarer again in another book.
This story however, picks up right after the closing events from book 1 - but instead follows Pepper and Lovelace back to Pepper's adopted world to find acceptance both within and without.
The story focuses on the two characters and bounces back and forth between the two (and along two different periods of time). I didn't find myself laughing in this book (I did in the first which is what spurred me to immediately read this and the third) but it was a touching story of individuals trying to find their place in the world and the loneliness that comes before.
In a way, I felt like the book was a pair of stories about mother and daughter - and whilst I'm neither, I found lots to relate to. And as with Chambers' first instalment of Wayfarers, I find myself wanting this future for our own humanity.
There's something both charming and utterly beautiful about the universe that Chambers has created for us. It was nice to travel to a new place and follow new characters (even though I still want to hear more about Kizzy and Jenks, and Dr Chef and Sissex - I suspect their on their own journey).
Good stuff. Very sweet. Very warm and loving story.
7 Highlight(s)
And seriously, anybody working in a job that doesn't let you take a nap when you need to should get a new job.
Parenting was considered a full-time job, and not something to be undertaken alone. As a woman had no way to plan for if and when she might become fertile, the idea of her abandoning her own profession to look after an unplanned child was unthinkable.
'So, tattooing … you've got a picture in your mind, then you put it on your body. You make a hazy imagining into a tangible part of you. Or, to flip it around, you want a reminder of something, so you put it on your body, where it's a real, touchable thing.
'With imagination, you can go anywhere!' Alain said. Jane didn't know what that stuff was, but it sounded pretty useful.
Making dogs into food wasn't fun.
'But the dead person doesn't know the food's there.' 'The living people do. Just because someone goes away doesn't mean you stop loving them.'
'Are any of these poisonous?' she asked. Oouoh wiggled his neck. 'To you? No idea. But I know where the med ward is, and you look easy to carry.'
Others I've read in the "Wayfarers" series: