Record of a Spaceborn Few

Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

"From the ground, we stand. From our ship, we live. By the stars, we hope."

This third book of the Wayfarers takes us out to the colonies of the Exodans, which we've heard about in Chambers' other books. The colonies are enormous ships constructed as permanent living spaces for humans who fled earth when it could no longer sustain them. The ships orbit an artificial sun and everything on board is preserved & recycled so as to continue to sustain future generations. I personally found the thoughtfulness, sustainability & efficiency of the onboard ecosystems truly elegant.

In this book we have a number characters that shift perspectives in each chapter. Each of these characters either by birth or choice finds themselves onboard an Exodan craft called the Asteria. At times we follow an archivist named Isabelle, and learn about the rich, preserved history of the Exodans. Or Kip, a teenager who is trying to figure out where is place in the universe will be. We also meet Sawyer, whose Exodan predecessors emigrated to on a Harmagian planet and he now travels to the Asteria in hopes of finding his roots. Eyas is a caretaker onboard the Asteria, whose job it is to perform funeral rites & prepare the bodies to return to the soil used in farming & planters onboard the ship. Tessa is a mother who grapples with making the right choice for the future of her family. And finally Ghuh'loloan is an alien and a researcher who visits the Exodan fleet to document their lives.

In this gentle, character-driven story Chambers does a beautiful job creating unique narratives for each of these characters while shaping an over-arching theme about the importance of culture - how it both roots us in our heritage and evolves to prepare us for our future. In reading, we remember that culture & civilization are not static, but are spurred to change by the choices of their people.