Lovely alternate history of the 20th century. Features a former WASP pilot who is now a computer working for the space industry. Liked how she and her husband use science to survive. ( )

I love Mary Robinette Kowal's writing and really wanted to like this book. I just couldn't get past the illogic at the heart of the book.
Her prose and characters are always delightful though.



Spoiler
WHY leave Earth rather than trying to survive on a planet that is much closer to habitable, despite the dire climate change? Mars is so far from being habitable and the resources to get any number of people there would be incredible. ( )

Summer 2019 (Hugo Nomination 2019 -- Novel);

Those little girls thought I could do anything. They thought that women could go to the moon. And because of that, they thought that they could go to the moon, too. They were why I needed to continue, because when I was their age, I needed someone like me. A woman like me.

I loved this book. I went into it being told that, and with a wary eye on how much more judgemental I can be on books wishing to be historical fiction (being written about the space race, while I was in the high holy days of everything 50th Anniversary of our walking on the moon), but all of that was so quickly and efficiently checked over to the side.

This book has its own pace, and it won't let you rush it, not even at the beginning when the world is burning around your ears, or later, when you realize months or years have passed, but without it feeling disjointed. I found that alone to be a really great point in its favor, because time skips, especially when trying to conver what would get America to focus on 'The Space Race' (and Space Colonization not just getting to space or the moon) and the actual timelines of making that happen as incredibly different things. Yet this book did them with steady, even aplomb.

There are so many topics I want to touch upon that were handled here so gracefully. There are so many large, hot button topics being handled with such care in this book, that it is very had for me to say any of them is truly more important than any other. It is the balancing of these, without slighting any of them for the other, while being able to comment on all of them from each disparate point, that earned so much of my esteem in this novel.

- The shift of the space race to being one that would involve, equally, a woman and, even more, generally women. That introduced them as the computers and war pilot of our own history but refused to leave them in the past and to leave the future and space only in the hands of men. The fact that this book is about women and the relationships between women, always helping each other forward, and even in making mistakes and atoning for those mistakes, is what makes it sparkle.

- Burgeoning racial awareness (and institutional obliviousness from her own upbringing, into racial defensiveness on the part of those being slighted, ignored, and overlooked) as displayed by our main character through the interaction with her initial crash saviors, her friends, and her fellow Lady Astronauts was absolutely, and mistake-were-made-but-i-kept-trying, believable. I loved getting to see this issue tackled by our main character personally, but, also, by the space program as race, skin color, and sex all intersected in The Program.

- The entirety of handling mental illness and medication from the beginning. The demonstration of what anxiety could look like, how debilitating both having it and ever considering any help for it (especially at what cost might be taken from that help), was in-depth and I appreciated it. I liked that this book showed martial support, therapy support, medicine support, friends & coworkers support, without it making the theme seem outlandish as it continued to be delicately woven through.

- I found myself deeply enmeshed in the constant weaving of the Jewish religion into the story as well. The way that worship first opened the doors to grief. The way that religious intoning ('to life') was the continued toast to dinners and celebrations and to those who are left living in the wake of so many who would never take another breath or live another day. I found myself appreciating the service and speeches, finding more of a reflection of how the world was hit, and was continuing to pick itself back up to push forward.

- I appreciated the healthy marriage depiction. While I did get tired of how often we got 'silly space euphemisms,' I was pleased with the fact that always lead into a fade to black, and that it continually showed us this couple was still having, for themselves and their own lifestyle, a healthy love and sex life. I love their marriage, and the delicate dance they did in trying not to bring their marriage into their workplace daily, where that kept and where it broke.

In the end, I'm definitely looking forward to reading all the other pieces in this series. ( )

I really wanted to love this book, but it was emotionally difficult, and without the reward of novel world-building or technology which I usually look for in sci-fi/fantasy. It seems much more like historical fiction than sci-fi. I don't think it was a bad book, it just wasn't for me. ( )

I'm not crying, you're crying. I'm freaking sobbing. ( )