Excellent short novelette from Mary Robinette Kowal about having to choose between having children and striking out amongst the stars. Except it isn’t about that at all. It’s about having to choose between watching your husband die, slowly and with less dignity every day, and striking out amongst the stars. Or maybe it’s about growing old, and the way the old are manipulated and treated, trotted out like icons from a fading past. Or perhaps…
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If it feels like just yesterday that I read The Calculating Stars, that’s because it practically was! I seldom read sequels so close together, but once in a while I manage to buy them at the same time. In this case, I rushed out and bought The Fated Sky the weekend after I finished the first book and very deliberately made this my first book of 2019—I like to start my reading year off…
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How much did I love The Calculating Stars? When I picked this up at Chapters, I didn’t realize that its sequel was already out! So when I finished this on the evening of December 28, I was very tempted to rush out and buy that sequel right away. But Chapters was closing in 20 minutes, so I waited until the next day, and then I bought The Fated Sky with the intention of…
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In Grade 12 English we were responsible for an Independent Study Unit, where we read two novels and wrote an essay comparing their common themes. We also had to give a presentation on a theme from the books. I studied Douglas Coupland’s Hey Nostradamus! and Girlfriend in a Coma; my presentation was on theodicy and the Problem of Evil. A classmate gave a presentation about Pride and Prejudice. We had the opportunity to…
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I didn’t realize until I started reading that The Relentless Moon, while technically a sequel to The Fated Sky, is more of a spin-off in the series. Mary Robinette Kowal writes from the perspective of Nicole Wargin, a white woman who was a side character in the first two books. She is one of the original astronauts (or astronette, ugh) alongside Elma York, the Lady Astronaut and narrator of the first two books,…