4.5 stars.

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within concludes Becky Chambers' wonderful science fiction series with another heartwarming story that is so characteristic of all the Wayfarers books.

This final volume harkens back to the themes that I've read and loved in the very first book, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. In most science fiction stories, there's always some form of study of the human condition as humanity is flung into circumstances which at this point only exists in the imagination of what-ifs and possibilities of what's to come. What Chambers did in her series is to shift that into an even more exaggerated form by giving us multi-species interactions in a space-age era with galactic-level governments and politics. Just imagine, even though our world has begun to feel a lot smaller with globalisation and technological advances, it is at the same time still fragmented as differences in races, religions and cultures remain as barriers between people.

Apply this concept into the universe, across species and galaxies, and that's what you get with the Wayfarers series, which was felt most keenly in the first and last book of the series. However, humans are still physiologically the same despite the differences I've mentioned above. By extending this to multi-species, where some aliens don't even breath the same air or reproduce the same way, the barriers are magnified manifold. Somehow Chambers managed to make it work wonderfully in her stories, which are just narratives of these characters (with all their past history, cultural heritage, and even career choices) interacting with each other and learning how to tolerate, accept or even welcome the differences. Given these strong themes of acceptance, LBGTQIA representations are important in these books.

In The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, we have three different alien species stuck on the planet Gora after a freak accident took out all the satellites in orbit. The danger of the space debris resulted in them having to stay grounded at their rest stop, the Five Hop, One Stop, run by a mother and son (Ouloo and Tupo) who were also of another type of alien species. The entire story played out as they all got to know each other, sometimes much more than what could be deemed as comfortable. One of these characters, an Akarak called Speaker, is the one that fascinated me the most as her species was probably one of the most misunderstood amongst them all.

The character interactions are the best part of the book (and series) for me. Those who have read this series before would already know that these books do not centre its narrative around a plot. They are just stories about people and aliens. Stories that explore the condition of being alive, or what it means to have a place to call home or someone totally different to call a friend or even family. Warm and fuzzy feelings abound when I read this book, although it still wasn't as good as the first one for me. That one made me cry as my heart felt close to bursting.

The Wayfarers books are connected only in the barest sense of an arc and through its worldbuilding, and each could entirely stand on its own. Having said that, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is still the best entry point into this series as there are threads which flow into its immediate sequel and this final instalment. I find it most unusual to consider The Galaxy, and the Ground Within as a conclusion as there really isn't anything to conclude upon. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and felt satisfied with the ending. I also found it to be a good book to be read together with another title; the lack of any real plot or tension means that it doesn't have that unputdownable quality but it sure made me feel good whenever I was reading it. This is cosy science fiction at its best.

Another incredible book by my favourite author- Becky Chambers' characters are unfailingly queer, unfailingly curious, unfailingly kind. Her novels fill me with a bittersweet nostalgia for a world I've never seen and won't see in my lifetime. They are filled with true friends- those who respect your decisions, your personhood, your autonomy, your faith, and your needs without question. These books comfort me and tend wounds I didn't know I was carrying. Endless stars!

I have thoroughly enjoyed all of the books in the Wayfarer series, but I think this final installment is my favourite! It tells the story of three different spacefarers briefly trapped on a planet during a stopover. Becky Chambers is the absolute master of quiet, character driven science fiction and here, she focuses on the way in which we are the same, despite our cultural differences and beliefs. As always, the characters here are beautifully drawn and we have the chance to fully inhabit their thoughts and feelings as they are thrust into a situation in which they have to interact with others that they aren't familiar with. Dealing with topics of gender, class, parenthood and colonialism, among others, at its heart, this is the story of how we should all just get along, and I absolutely loved every single second.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The Wayfarers universe created by Becky Chambers tends to be a heartwarming and joyous place populated by species and characters designed to address the inequalities and hypocrisies of modern Western culture. In The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, Chambers smashes the concept of ‘our differences unite us’ out of the park in a pretty much plotless novel.

"With no water, no air, and no native life, the planet Gora is unremarkable. The only thing it has going for it is a chance proximity to more popular worlds, making it a decent stopover for ships traveling between the wormholes that keep the Galactic Commons connected. If deep space is a highway, Gora is just your average truck stop."

Three individuals representing three very different species arrive at the ‘truck stop’ owned by Ouloo and her offspring Tupo, making that a fourth species. Tupo has yet to decide on xyr gender yet. Something has happened - it matters little what - that means that instead of a few hours' stop, our protagonists are forced to stay a few days. They have their own anxieties about the delay and their own prejudices and ignorances about the other species.

It isn’t easy to think about Chambers’ species. Ouloo and Tupa are Laru; quadruped mammalian with long necks (hilarious looking!). They have a typical parent/teenager relationship. Captain Tem Pei is an Aeluon; humanoid whose primary communication method is colour - Aeluons change their skin colour. Speaker, an Akarak, who are diminutive creatures with a beak who have specific breathing requirements (oxygen being lethal) and therefore spend all of their time within the cockpit of a mechanised suit. Roveg, a Quelin, is perhaps arthropodic in nature, having a carapace and multiple pairs of weird (according to Tupo) legs on the thorax. They are to spend the novel at Five-Hop One-Stop and therefore get to know one another.

Not a huge amount happens. They talk, eat, drink (and get drunk) squabble and worry about their destinations and the delay in their travel plans. At the start of the tale, they are tolerant and respectful, but there are assumptions and misunderstandings. It is assumed, for example, that the Akarak wear their suits to be a similar size to most sentient species. There is a lot of learning about parenting. Aeluons lay eggs after casual sex and the mothers leave their offspring to be raised in nurseries. Quelin males have a very strong bond with their children. Speaker is named due to her linguistic abilities and she has a sister called Tracker who has had a lung-related illness since being an eggling. Akarak’s siblings are incredibly closely connected.

Each chapter is told from the perspective of either Ouloo, Pei, Speaker or Roveg. Occasionally, however, Chambers throws in an Everyone chapter, which is odd and probably against all the rules of good writing. These varied points-of-view highlight everyone’s differences and similarities. Some are based on etiquette or social standing, while others are based on long and deep-seated resentments of their holders species’ places in Chambers’ universe. So there is a little conflict to go along with the eating and worrying.

On occasion, however, Chambers pushes the credibility of her science fiction. It is all very well having these distinct species but her prose brings up the question of evolution. The Laru have stubby paws. Not that having stubby paws should prevent intelligence, but it does beg the question on how they evolved from non-sentient to the ability to have a space programme. Not having much of a plot isn’t an issue with The Galaxy, and the Ground Within but having serious science within its science fiction is. In something like Star Wars you don’t wonder how a species of hammerhead could evolve because at its root is adventure fantasy, not science fiction. In this universe, species are wildly imaginative and have very different lives but they have very similar emotional reactions to humans to whatever the stimulus is. Evolution doesn’t work like that. Yet the characters are still lovable, if lacking in multiple dimensions.

What isn’t a problem, however, is the warmth, heart and wit in Chambers’ writing. A mention of shoes (clothes for feet) is genuinely funny. When the characters are sitting around eating, Pei explains cheese (the human foodstuff) to the others. It sounds appalling, as described, and highlights the ridiculousness of being human in a nutshell. Of course, some of the characters are vegetarian. Several diversities are covered in this book - sex and sexuality, ethical dietary requirements, (dis)ability, political ideology, and cultural confusions. For some reason, the quality of the prose and the positivity in the text (there is little subtext) outshines all the problems that this book has. Possibly because Chambers doesn’t make it all sound like a lecture in getting along despite our differences.

The story comes to a conclusion when an incident occurs that means that all the characters have to put aside their differences to work together. It’s a bit hackneyed and there’s never any sense of peril or jeopardy. But it doesn’t matter. Enjoy it for what it is; an imaginative galaxy of species that reflect the problems with humanity and a pleasant distraction in a familiar universe filled with love and positivity. Something that our world could learn from, even if the lessons are obvious and cheesy.

I literally don't have the words to tell anyone how amazing Becky Chambers` books are. Her word choice is always perfect; it flows, it conjures, it emotes.
You don't even really have to have read the others in the series to understand what's going on because everything is just so compacted and explained without huge infodumps or exposition.
I'm going to stop before I embarrass myself.
Read it. You'll thank me.

The final Wayfarers novel is the opposite of a big finale number, and that's more than OK



I'll level with you, dear readers: somehow I haven't written a full length book review in a month, and I forgot how reviews start. So I'm just going to start by going "what IS reviewing?" and then follow up with "why have I had some books on my review pile for over a month without writing about them" and then we'll see where we go from there. One such book is The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, the last in Becky Chambers' Hugo Award winning Wayfarers series of spacefaring novels starring people who, despite the challenges of the world they live in, choose to be fundamentally kind and generous with each other and see where that gets them. In another series, I'd have gone into a final instalment expecting something on a grander scale than the lead-up: a big budget finale episode of a book featuring More! of Everything! with high stakes and happy tied-up plots for everyone involved. This being the Wayfarers, I went in with no such expectations and it's a good thing I didn't, because in scale this is the smallest of the Wayfarers books: a tiny, isolated story in a small part of the galaxy, featuring a few transient characters who intersect for a few days and then go their separate ways once more. It defies all concepts of what a finale should be, and I have had no idea how to write about it, or, really, how I feel about it.

The book takes place on Gora, a planet whose economy is entirely built around being a rest stop for people passing through its various space gates to other parts of the galaxy. As Gora itself is an airless rock, those rest stops all take the form of various domes on the planet's surface, where travellers come down for the kind of hospitality experience one would expect at a transit hotel: a clean room, a decent meal, some supplies for their ship and maybe a weird souvenir from the gift shop. One such generic rest stop is owned by Laru (think the Mystics from Dark Crystal but fluffier) Ouloo and her child Tupo, and on what is supposed to be a completely average day they have three guests arrive: Pei, an Aeluon on her way to visit her partner (Ashby of The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet), Roveg, an insect-like Quelin trying to keep a mysterious urgent appointment, and Speaker, an Akarak whose role within her otherwise insular species is to interact and trade with outsiders. Unfortunately for all, this very average day is disrupted by a disaster that takes out much of the satellite network around Gora, leaving everyone stranded in the rest stop with nothing to do but rely on each other and wait for better news.

With the inciting incident set up, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within proceeds to do absolutely nothing to invoke any significant tension for the majority of its remaining length. Nothing bad happens to any of the characters or in their immediate vicinity as a result of the disaster, and the satellites are fixed offscreen with some cheerful official network updates serving as interludes between sections. Instead, the substance of the book revolves around the way these aliens interact with each other: from endless snacks (you will not forget that Ouloo is in the hospitality industry for a single second!) to dance parties to heartfelt conversations with teenagers about following their passions, the book lets these five aliens tell the story of why they have found themselves in this transit point, and where they're going next. The shared strand among the adults is that all are in some way exiled or distant from their species' expectations and communities. Pei, as readers of A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet will know, is from a species which considers inter-species romance a taboo and reproduction a responsibility, but wants to arrange her life in a very different way. Roveg's species are notoriously xenophobic and only those exiled are free to travel, meaning that his existence among the group means that he has been ostracised from his family and home for reasons that are explored through the book. Perhaps the book's most interesting strand is that involving Speaker and her species, the Akarak, who are methane-breathers whose planet was terraformed out of being habitable and who have never been offered just reparations or acknowledgement by a galaxy which continues to find them too inconvenient to accommodate. Because the Wayfarers books don't deal at the scale of political change, Speaker's story gets the least satisfying resolution of the lot, but it's an interesting wrinkle to add to the other background injustices and legacies which form the backdrop of Chambers' otherwise rather benign galaxy.

So yes, there's a reason for everyone to stay in one place and get to know each other longer than they otherwise would, and they eat some interesting snacks and have a dance party and tell stories, and then a bad accident does happen (as a result of the different forms of life support the different species need to survive) and everyone is kind of sobered and made to consider what they Really Want after this as a result of the accident, and then things are resolved with no lasting consequences and everyone goes off to live a slightly better version of the life they would have lived anyway. Which is to say, there's a way in which reading The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is a rather underwhelming experience. Becky Chambers has written enough books at this point (and I have read them) that it's obnoxious to go into them expecting something to happen in the traditional sense, but even by that metric, there's not much going on here: just a small story in a small corner of the galaxy, where individuals come up against overwhelming cultural dilemmas and encourage each other to solve them through some combination of being true to oneself and making good art. And yet, you know what? It works. It works because the idea of solving problems through individual empathy, while not a replacement for science fiction that grapples with wider systemic change, is just as radical an idea to explore, and it's also an extremely enjoyable wish fulfilment fantasy. It's hard to put into words what Chambers pulls off, and I can't shake the feeling that it would be even better in a video game or another interactive medium where gentle, character-driven exploration can feel more natural - but Chambers definitely pulls off the intended effect here, and I greatly enjoyed the experience of reading this book even as the "how" of its engaging me kind of didn't make sense.

The Galaxy and the Ground Within won't win over anyone who doesn't already like what Chambers does, and it's not your average series finale. But, as confused as my poor rusty reviewer brain might be, I can't imagine this series going out any other way.

Becky chambers does it again, and I wouldn't expect anything less. I could read these books forever, there's so many stories to tell, from the small ones of characters we pass by to the overall story of each book. I love the diversity in characters, not only sexual orientation, gender etc. but also species and finding out details about each one is so interesting.

This is a story about a planet that acts like a service station in space. You can rest a while and visit Five-Hop One-Stop which is Ouloo's home, where she tries to cater for all species. When a disaster happens in space, which limits communications and stops all travel, three aliens species are trapped at the Five-Hop One-Stop. Here begins their stories.

This is a book where not much happens but a lot happens. It's a dialogue between aliens, no humans, about their differences, politics, rights and histories. You end up loving the characters and I'm so glad Pei was in it, it was great getting to know her more. Speaker was a surprise, I loved her resolve, her love for her sister and her warmth.

My only criticisms are that I couldn't picture the characters very well, how small exactly was Speaker, what colour (I think white but kept picturing lobster red?) was Roveg? Ouloo and Tupo were just big cats for me. Not that this really mattered as the personalities of the characters shined through and didn't detract away from the story.

Also, how can Becky Chambers leave this universe!? There is SOOOOOO much more to tell. I feel like we've had an introduction to the GC and the species and she's set up the universe but she's only scratched the surface, there are more depths that can be explored! More detail of the Harmageions vs Akarak. What happens if Pei comes out about her relationship? What's the next tunnel? Will Jinx and Lovey be reunited? So. Many. Stories.

I didn’t mean to read this so quickly 😭

Becky Chambers is the queen of exploring human connection, what makes us different and what makes us the same. She celebrates culture and diversity in the most beautiful way.

Beautiful, soft, human and so real, even though it’s set in space . Absolutely stunning as expected and I’m so sad this series is over.

In the last book of the series, The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers, we follow a character we saw in the first book, Pei. Pei gets stuck with a bunch of misfits on the planet Gora. Gora has no water, air or native life so the only way people land there, is if they are on a neighbouring more popular planet. In our human world, she would call it a service station or a truck stop for those americans out there. It is just a stop before you land where you are meant to be going. When a technological failure occurs and halts all traffic to and from Gora, Pei and two other people get thrown together with nothing to do but wait they end up talking about their lives and wonder what their purpose might be and how to make that move and making it a reality.

First and foremost, I love that Chambers always brings back minor characters from other books and tells a tale of them being the main character of their own story. And to truly get the experience of this, I highly recommend that you read this series in order of publication, though it is an anthology series and can be read in any order, I feel like you will get a better and truer experience of this world and how all the characters of the books interact with each other. But having a new cast of characters every book does mean that you don’t get to see your favourites again. I absolutely loved the cast of the first book and I’m sad I didn’t get to see them. This will always be something that I dislike about anthology series. And in true Chambers style, this book is filled with little plot and more story about the characters themselves as her books are always character driven not plot driven which is something I love about Becky Chambers.

Overall, 4 out of 5 stars.

The last of Becky Chambers Wayfarer series and the perfect ending. I loved all the books in this series so much but this was the first I’ve read and not listened to as an audio book. It was a brilliant book for our current times and really shows how great Science Fiction reflects our world. Becky Chambers is such a brilliant writer and I cannot wait to see where she takes us next.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the early copy.

Becky Chambers have this incredible way of writing character driven novels that I can never quite explain to people - so I usually just push it at them while begging them to give it a chance.

As the last book in the Wayfarer series (I am still hoping this is not true) it did much as its successors aka. It grabbed me by the heart and did not let go.

The idea that four characters completely without ties to each other can get stuck on a intergalactic truck stop and forced to work together would from any other author sound like a recipe for disaster, and yet, that isn’t what this book is about.

Its about tolerance. About knowledge of others and reaching out even if you do not necessarily want to.

We are as always loosely tied to characters we have met throughout the series but we are also introduced to completely new species that once again left me in awe at how Chambers write aliens so intricately and yet infuse them with the very best parts of what I deem to be human.

The Five-Hop One-Stop as a setting is full of humor and warmth and I loved getting to know the motivations of each characters as Chambers let us follow along the events like spectators on a lazy river.

The pacing is brilliant, the humor hitting all the right notes and I would follow each of these new characters into forever.

I cannot recommend enough,

The perfect ending to an amazing series. This bottle-episode book manages to bring back events and feelings from the previous three books, making the entire story feel incredibly expansive despite the majority of it taking place in a galactic truck stop.

As with the rest of the Wayfarers series, the characters are more important than the plot. In the case of this particular instalment in the series, three travellers from different species get stuck on a planet after routine technological maintenance goes wrong and hinders communication and travel. These very different sapients, with their own quirks and histories and traditions, get thrown together as they try to pass the time until they can continue on with their travels. And so they talk about themselves and their species' history, they share stories and food and experiences. Chambers is a master as reflecting the human condition on these aliens, with their different experiences and opinions on birth and death and everything in between.

It was sometimes easy to forget that there were no human characters in this story at all. At least, until the next mention of a character's hind legs or fur. Because that was, I suppose, the main lesson one could take away from this story: despite all our differences, there is still common ground to be found between us and, well, the rest of the galaxy.

This is one of those stories that I didn't know I needed until I was reading it. The entire Wayfarers series holds a special place in my heart, and I am sad to see it ending. But I am also very excited about what Becky Chambers will give us next.

Becky Chambers' novels continue to world build and play with the genre in a consistently interesting and exciting way. I was dying to read this and it didn't disappoint. The series has been incredible and this is a great addition to it. I could happily read books set in this universe forever.

Becky Chambers as an author is the scifi equivalent of Fredrik Backman. Both of them with their completely different genres and writing styles makes me believe in the inherent goodness of people.
The Galaxy and the Ground Within does exactly this. It was deeply humane for a book with no human characters. The humanity within was shining like a beacon. Everytime I finish a Becky Chambers book, I am left introspecting, learning and unlearning, finding myself changed for the better. Even the most mundane scenes were made profound at the hands of Becky Chambers.
If you are looking for a dramatic space opera full of action, this book is not for you. But if you are looking for a heartwarming slice of life set in strange galaxies as yet undiscovered, this one’s for you. Highly highly recommended.

The final book in a sequence should be the full stop. It should be the ending of endings; the neat tying of plot strings and rousing farewell to characters we loved. As with many things I was fascinated that Becky Chambers avoided this in the The Galaxy, and the Ground Within with only a reference to the other adventures and one minor character thrust to the foreground. Instead it is a distillation of the way this series is written that a simple traffic accident in space sets in motion a series of unusual people meeting and learning to understand one another and also for readers an opportunity to learn more about ourselves.

Gora sits between two wormholes – you would usually treat it as a fuel and food depot for a few hours until your slot is called. At the Five Hop One-Shop Ouloo and xyr teenage child Tupo prepare for some visitors while their flight slots become free. A strange group is assembled – Roveg an artist but notably does not have the usual honorifics of the Quelin people; Pei an Aeleon cargorunner and one other stranger ship that eventually is found to be Speaker a member of the outsider and little understood Akarak people. All strangers to one another and all in a hurry to get somewhere else. Then the sky goes on fire as a satellite network crashes into one another. They’re stuck initially for hours and then it seems days. All five individuals have to learn to be around each other leading to some surprising developments.

In many ways this is the most intimate novel in the series since The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet with a very small group and all stuck to one location, but I think this is the distillation of everything Chambers has been talking about in the series for some time. We have here almost no humans in the main cast (although Pei being the lover of Ashby Captain of the Wayfarer is the key link to the wider series); instead Chambers explores four alien cultures with representatives who are not themselves that representative of their people. Oouloo and Tupo left to seek a new way of life and they work damn hard to make their business work while Tupo is gaining xyr own understanding of the world that actually makes their unexpected guests stop and think.

Roveg from the typically isolationist Quelin throws himself into exploring other worlds and cultures so actually os most interested in knowing more but at the same time feels guilt over an appointment he cannot mix despite being a political exile. Pei is battling her role supporting military operations for her people with a forbidden love for a human that even Ashby’s crew is not aware of. Speaker strikes a cord with Roveg and is suspicious of Pei but most of all worries about her sister trapped in the wider orbit. As their stay gets longer the reader gets to explore these characters and find out what makes each one tick and watch their relationships develop in unusual ways. Tupo is entranced by all these aliens, Speaker feels concern as the Akarak have often been viewed dismissively by the wider galactic community and these tensions occasionally boil over as people feel trapped. This a story about people at a crossroads in their lives actually stuck at a crossroads – their decisions will change them fundamentally/



Two strands in particular pulled me in Roveg the political exile who increasingly just wants to say hello to their family one more time feels tragic in many places. Someone who loves seeing alien cultures, sees other worlds as opportunities for learning and yet back home they’re the criminal. The most fascinating though is Speaker a member of a race that lives very short lifetimes; from a conquered planet that no longer exists and no one in the wider galactic community has helped so they make their own way through space often avoiding detection. There is a brutal chapter where the Akarak representatives take the wider galaxy in charge to task for not helping them as they are too different while the very humanoid Exodans who we only met in the last book now get all the attention. It’s a brutal angry passage that struck a cord with me that western governments only ever seem focused on white faces and forget all those other communities that need help – instead viewing them with suspicion and apathy.

I’ve read some fascinating criticism of the wider series by people who feel this series is not great science fiction. They find it too cosy. I think that is an unusual take – in many ways Chamber’s universe is one of the most dangerous there is. Money still exists, the powerful are still in charge and accidents happen such as a spaceship blowing up, a satellite relay etc that can destroy the world without warning. We see political persecution, misuse of clones and AI technology and a lot of isolationism. Chamber’s characters aren’t those in charge; or the best of the best they’re the individuals trying to live in a often uncaring universe and it’s only their friends and family that keeps them going. That for me is the reason these books work so much for so many. The last decade or so has seen huge economic an political shifts that for many people there isn’t any suitable welfare, support, job security that even people like me born just more a couple of decades earlier are used to. I wonder if many of Chamber’s critics realise, they don’t have this experience in common with some of the newer fans in the genre and that may be why Chamber’s voice works so well for so many new readers instead.

A set of stories that explores those communities that survive in despite of these changes and that has to work itself on the solution I can clearly see why this appeals and again in this tale while the big special effects are all off stage the main plot movement is a helpful teenager making a big mistake. At which point the cast has to put aside their differences and focus on doing the right thing. I found the approach very powerful and uplifting especially after a year in isolation like we’ve just had.

Is this a happy ending?

Oh goodness me yes – this is a damn fine farewell to a great series that I think has a lot to say about the times we live in. In some ways the Wayfarer’s Universe is little changed from when we first met it – the same powers in charge; the way of life is hard and outlook for some still uncertain but a tale of finding hope in your family, friends and your own found family is something I think science fiction has shied away from in it’s focus on empires and rebellions. Revolutions are a lot rarer in reality and keeping yourself going each day can be a hard struggle too. That’s why we need books like this to give us some hope for the future and remind us being kind is often its own kind of rebellion– highly recommended

It's rare that the final instalment of a series becomes an instant favourite, but I really do think that this is Becky Chambers' best book to date. The timing may have helped in a small way, but it is such a beautifully crafted novel, so perfectly building on the foundations of the first three, but without relying on any accumulated knowledge - so it could easily be read as a standalone.

This felt like the perfect lockdown read. It has well and truly broken my lockdown reading slump!
5 characters from completely different parts of the universe just happen to become stranded in the same place, at the same time. The fact that none of them is human makes their challenges and their struggles just removed enough for the whole story to retain the escapism that I know and love about sci-fi, but the beauty of Chambers' prose, and her masterful creation of characters makes everything they experience seem timely, relevant and achingly familiar.

This final instalment has made me want to go back to the beginning of the series and lose myself in them all, all over again, and I can't wait to see what she brings out next.

You don’t have to have read the previous books in the Wayfarers series before reading The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, although they will make you more familiar with the universe. If you’re not a hardcore sci-fi reader (I’m not usually), don’t be intimidated by the stylised format and language – once you’re in, it will envelop you. The characters are rich and interesting, and the writing is beautiful. It’s a joy to be absorbed into the atmosphere of this book.

I am immensely grateful to the publisher & NetGalley for sharing this arc with me. I adore the Wayfarers series & feel privileged to be able to review this final instalment.

When I requested this arc, I was still in the process of reading the second-to-last book in the series; this one is much shorter & took me a mere two days to finish. Soon as I finished Record of a Spaceborn Few, I immediately knew it was my favourite of the series. But The Galaxy and the Ground Within certainly gives me pause on that assessment.

I appreciated the fewer number of narrators compared to ROASF but the book itself follows the trademark blueprint of the Wayfarer series; character development over a backdrop of disasters in space. The events of this book taking place over a short period of time did not come across as intense but rather intimate. The characters all immediately stand out without taking away from each other. However the unique aspect of this narrative is that it’s not just about the lives of these characters intertwining & setting each other off on a new tangent but rather how the author uses their experiences to share perspectives on larger than life matters. TGATGW is as much about found family as it is about strangers coming together to help each other because that’s what you’re supposed to do. Whereas ROASF focused on belonging as a species, TGATGW focuses on all species belonging together as a whole. Differing from each other but also benefiting. And at the heart of all this storytelling is a set of endearing yet simple characters just trying to get to the next best part of their lives.

I couldn’t recommend this entire series enough as well as this rather sweet ending which comes as a book all on its own. Becky Chambers, for myself at least, made the wonderful distinction of science fiction being about the characters as much as the mysteries of physics & biology & the Wayfarers series has been a gift to that end, changing my perspective of the genre forever.

Rating: 4.75/5

I am so very sad this series is over. And I think it ended the best way possible.

I'm not going to give it all 5 stars for a simple reason... although once again, I got super invested into the characters we followed in this one (especially Pei), I will forever love the Wayfarer's crew the most (Lovey included). Those will have my heart for the eternity.

But... saying that, I think this one is only half a step behind the second installment for me (the first being the best one, still) because I really loved everything about it. I know it makes no sense, but my ratings are really based on my feelings.

I think there are still places, characters and situations this series could explore, but I respect Chambers' decision to end the series here. It was a lovely ending. One that made a full circle, of sorts, with Pei going to visit Ashby at the end.

This book focused a lot on family and it was once again a very cosy read, even though many things that happened in it were not cosy by definition. What I mean is that the feeling that reading of this series gives you is one of being wrapped up in a fluffy blanket.

I see myself rereading this series in the future. After marathoning all 4 books in a short period of time, Chambers became one of my favourite authors, and I will be picking up everything by her. So, even if you're not a big scifi fan, I think this series could be for you.