The Fated Sky

Very enjoyable but not as good as The Calculating Stars. This one feels rushed in many ways. The number of times, for example, that Elma talks about how perfect her husband is is tiring. He’s a pretty two dimensional character if I’m being honest. Parker is far more interesting and becomes even more so in this book. It is nitpicking, I know, but a thesaurus would’ve been handy when the urge to use the word “snort” came up.

That said, I really enjoyed this book and, for its faults, really couldn’t put it down. There was a lot of subtlety to it, some of which goes unanswered until the authors notes at the ends. One in particular, relating to cryptography, never gets answered and may not be obvious to anyone who doesn’t have experience with ciphers. So it was fun little nugget left for those of us who do. That kind of attention to detail is what makes this and The Calculating Stars so great.

I look forward to reading the third installment.

The sequel to The Calculating Stars, and most of what I said about that book remains true for this one. It's a fun alternate history of Earth, where a meteor impacting Chicago in the 50s galvanizes America into an earlier space race and realization of the urgency of addressing global warming and colonizing other planets. In the first book pilot Elma York becomes the first Lady Astronaut and humanity reaches Mars; in this sequel humanity is now aiming for Mars, trying to make the first trip there and establish an advance camp in order to prepare for colonization. Once again Elma is in the middle of things, both as an astronaut and mathematical savant, and also as before as one of the PR faces of the mission, making it look glamourous, safe, and palatable to the great unwashed masses.

In the setting of the 60s there are a lot of opportunities to address sexism and racism, and the author once again attempts to tackle these; in the first book the emphasis was more on sexism as Elma has to fight to even get women into space, while in this sequel the focus moves more onto racism as the mostly-white astronauts prompt concerns back home about whether space will become an escape for just the rich and white, leaving behind poorer folks from non-white communities on a dying planet. Protestors try to cancel the space program, arguing that the wealthy and white shouldn't just have an easy escape, but that we should fix the problems on Earth first. This causes some issues for the Mars mission, although nothing our intrepid crew can't overcome, of course.

I liked this book a little less than the first, I think. While the first was fun, this one seemed to be trying a little too hard to tackle serious issues of discrimination, but not quite getting it entirely right. Once again Elma is viewing everything from a position of what seems wilful ignorance - how could she possibly not be aware that adding her to a crew would require bumping someone else? She's a freaking mathematics genius, surely she can count crewmembers. The references to homosexuality are pretty awkward and end in a bad trope. The attempts to deal with racism seem well-intentioned but shallow; nothing is really dealt with, no fundamental lessons seem to be learned or changed. We end up with a happy ending but without the feeling of really having earned it. The most awful racist in the book seems to be covered up and never actually dealt with as he deserves. And once again a big deal is made about Elma being Jewish (and there being a Muslim crew member) but then nothing ever seems to really come out of that. It just feels as if there was a lot more potential to this setting that never really actualized, so while the story is fun, it all ends up feeling rather shallow, making it an entertaining read but a bit frustrating in the end.

I know there's another book coming out this summer, but honestly, The Fated Sky wraps up the story thus far really well. I'd be just as happy if this were a duology! It's a great continuation of the story that began with The Calculating Stars, starting up when humanity has colonized the moon and is starting to look toward Mars.

There's so much to like about this book. Not only does a large portion take place in space (always cool!), but I really enjoyed the governmental and interpersonal drama around the issues of sex/gender and race, especially set against the background of the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement. Erma York is an outspoken protagonist who pushes back against these constraints and isn't afraid to tell anyone what's on her mind. Sometimes this backfires or she's a little misguided, but her heart's in the right place and she learns from her mistakes.

Mary Robinette Kowal is a masterful storyteller, balancing alternate history with facts in a way that makes the whole thing seem plausible. She also writes characters so well, forming them into whole humans instead of feeling flat, allowing the reader to emphasize with them.

I'm excited to see what Mars has in store for Erma, Nathaniel, and the rest.