I wasn’t sold the execution of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, but I decided to give A Closed and Common Orbit a chance. I was curious if an open plot point would be concluded. I now wish that I hadn’t.

A Closed and Common Orbit takes the series in a complete different direction, forgoing all of the characters from The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet except for Pepper, a secondary character whose only purpose was to provide plot pointers for A Closed and Common Orbit.

A Closed and Common Orbit presents us with 2 storylines, both with their own set of issues.

Firstly it tells the story of Peppers origin’s, for the most part seen through the eyes of a 10-14 year old. The plot itself might be interesting (young brainwashed child escapes factory and survives in the wilderness with the help of a crashed AI) but the way it’s brought forward can only be described as b-o-r-i-n-g. Not once did I feel any suspense, everything is so long-winded. There is so much focus on what she thinks and almost nothing on what actually happens. (character-driven is not an excuse to hide behind dang-it). We follow her from when she’s 10 up until she’s about 20, but the entire time, you get the feeling she has the mind of a 5 year old and it was utterly annoying. Also quite predictable and meh.

Secondly we follow Sidra, the fresh installation of Lovelace that saw life at the end of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. She’s an AI, living in a android bodykit and she spends most of her time sulking, also like a teenager, about everything thats wrong with her. It gave me a huge who-am-I YA vibe. Just like the previous installment, no trace of actual science was to be found, and the way the AI thinks and acts feel completely counter-intuitive to me. Without any science to back that up, it constantly broke my immersion, which in turn makes me just annoyed by everything that happens.

About half way, I made a conscious effort not to dwell on the unbelieveable AI bits and just go with the flow. It worked, for the most part, but it didn’t change a thing about the fact that everything is still incredibly boring (and cheesy, let’s not forget that).

I thought about DNF’ing this multiple times, but decided to stick to it, even if it was just so I would be able to give a review of the entire story, and not get called out because I ‘didn’t finish it and it got so much better after you stopped’. Well I can tell you, I wish I had. This was a waste of my time.

I can see why people would like it. Both story lines (girl in wilderness and AI finds purpose in life) are actually things that would interest met. But the lack of any science whatsoever, the flat characters and the complete lack of stuff going on makes for a boring execution. This reads like a feel-good novel for lost teens and overly romantic souls. It just lacks depth for me. Shame though, the ideas weren’t all that bad.

Comparing it to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, I have to conclude that this is worse. The first one was boring and cheesy, but at least the characters were kind of interesting and at least a few interesting things happened OUTSIDE of people’s heads. Unfortunately I really didn’t like this, 1 star.