This was absolutely lovely scifi that reminded me a lot of Firefly in terms of down-to-earth real ship operations with a lovely, relatable crew and a gritty/real feeling universe. Seeing the crew of the Wayfarer coming together, in all their alien differences, and following them on their way to a difficult job, and seeing their hardship and friendship, was touching and a wonderful help against the autumn gloom.

I'm never really sure what to make of the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers. I usually enjoy reading the books, because I only start them when I'm in the right frame of mind, for instance after reading a couple of complicated or dark books. The slice-of-life space fluff is nice. Becky Chambers is good at describing small realistic scenes, be it angry teens, toddler tantrums, stubbornness, or romance. But at the same time, things always seemed so smoothed out and sanded down that I can't help but miss some substance, or plot, or … less obvious moralising, in the end. There's a bunch of poetic passages in there that touched me – but at the same time they felt like a cheap grab for my feelings. Just because the grab is successful, it's not good. I'm going to continue reading for the poetic prose and fluff, but I'm not quite convinced.

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers is the second part of the Wayfarers series. It's a good match for the first part: expanding different parts of the world, and worldbuilding, and starring characters that were not quite central to the first book. It delves into the pan-alien world and implications of sentient AI with a sense of wonder, and it's well-written, certainly. It's also … fluff, to use a fanfiction term. It's very much giving us a slice-of-life view of the world, with few to none real confrontations. It can be very calming and healing to see a world where most people just try to live their lives and be good to each other, but I'm happy that I'm only reading books like this very occasionally, as I was missing any tension or overarching … thing. But as a once-in-a-while relaxation read, it performs very well.