Sometimes a book comes along at exactly the right time and can influence your reading of said book. 
 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is exactly that book for me. After a haul of fantasy reads, with plenty of GrimDark murder and mayhem, I was desperately ready for some SciFi and happiness. Boy! to you get happy and huggy with this book. 
 The story is about a crew on board a interstellar tunnelling ship, (punches wormholes through space). This crew, is an interesting mix of humans, alien species and a sentient AI called Lovey. I won't go into all the details of the aliens, but there is a good mix of personalities and alien culture. The crew, are a really close knit team and there is much happiness on the ship. Even as much as some cross species shagging, which is eyebrow raising, if your species has eyebrows. 
 This first book is all about building the universe and the characters and it does a wonderful job of doing that, making it a very easy to read book, with great characters that actually work very well, even though there is so much niceness. For me the Kizzy female tech character is an absolute winner; she reminds me so much of Tiny Tina from Borderlands, that she just cracks me up every time she speaks. 
 ""Yeah, she fell into it during her teens," said Kizzy. "Ran away from home, hitched a ride to Earth, joined a clan, ate honest-to-god wild meat, the whole thing. Can you imagine?" She fell into a theatrical stalking crouch. "You're like, all sneaking through the grass" -- she skipped from side to side -- "dodging snakes or rats or whatever, and you've just got this big pointy stick, and you have to run up to this fucking buffle -- " 
 "Buffle?" said Sissix. 
 "It's like a big cow or something. And then you stab it and stab it and stab it, and it's all throwing you around like oh, shit -- " Kizzy flailed in nonspecific pantomime 
 The whole plot is based on a job to punch a new wormhole through to these bas ass aliens who are always at war with each other and the rest of the Galaxy has decided that it is time that they joined them (all in the name of getting at resources of course). So whilst the ship has a big happy atmosphere, real life soon catches them up, because not all alien races are cheerful. There are some hairy moments on the journey and the book ends on a sad note leaving no doubt that there are plenty of more books to come in this series 
 It reminds me of a light version of The Expanse. Very strong characters and wonderful galaxy building. 
 I was desperately in need of something fun, exciting and full of characters that I cared about, I really do care about these guys and I cannot wait to read the next book, which is a side story to this. 
 It's been a while since I have given five stars. Even if you are not a scifi fan, this is worth a read, it is not hard scifi at all and in all honesty, it could be the same story set in fantasy about building a rail track to another part of a nation, which different clans. 
 Well worth the read. Recommended!