Review: The Fated Sky
4.5 stars
This series is on my instant buy list and skips to the top of my TBR list. Kowal pulls no punches regarding the politics and passion in spaceflight, tackling both racial and gender conflicts with a vivacious cast of characters. This is one of my favorite married couples in all of fiction, and their encoded messages to each other offer (but don’t require of) the reader a little extracurricular fun. This is an inspiring read and a timely warning for contemporary space programs.
Tangentially… I find it auspicious that THE CALCULATING STARS and THE FATED SKY came out last year, centering on getting women into manned exploration missions to the Moon and Mars in a male-dominated era, and this year, the first program to land a woman on the Moon is announced. Here’s to making fiction come true–and learning what not to do from characters’ mistakes, rather than real loss of life.
