But first, a brief note on Into the Spider-Verse: we watched this film recently and absolutely loved it. I think my favourite character was the one with the spider-themed powers, but Kaitlyn preferred the spider-powered one. ^^ ^^

So, the Lady Astronaut books. Minor spoilers I guess? But honestly I think the fact that they're referred to as the 'Lady Astronaut' series, and the fact that the cover of the second book literally shows a (lady) astronaut on a bright orange planet provides some pretty strong hints that there's space travel involved.

Anyway: I liked both of these books, but I enjoyed The Calculating Stars more than its sequel. The reason is that The Calculating Stars can be described as "What if punchpunk space travel, but also prejudice?", while The Fated Sky is closer to "What if prejudice in space travel (but also punchpunk)?". There are a few references to the technology in The Fated Sky, but you could update them to modern scifi terminology and not have any impact on the story. In contrast, if you got rid of the punch cards from The Calculating Stars, you would have a completely different book.

One knock-on effect of this is that the characters of The Fated Sky can feel rather more modern than their counterparts in the first book - or rather, the language they use to describe the actions and attitudes of prejudice feel like the language we would use in the 21st Century, not something from the middle of the 20th. It only shows up in a few places, but it did give me pause.

Which is not to say I didn't enjoy the book! I did, and I was particularly pleased that a certain Chekhov's Gun involving the number of spaceships launched did indeed go off - but in a totally different direction (do guns go off in directions?) to the one I was imagining. It was a brilliant balance between predictability and originality.

I'm delighted to know that Mary Robinette Kowal is working on not one but two sequels (The Relentless Moon and The Derivative Base, per Wikipedia). I will certainly be reading them both, and recommend that others do too.

hS