Stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov’s, several Year’s Best anthologies and her collections Word Puppets and Scenting the Dark and Other Stories. She’s a member of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses and has received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, four Hugo awards, the RT Reviews award for Best Fantasy Novel, the Nebula, and Locus awards. I am in love with this series, and I'm stoked to be delving into the next one tomorrow.Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of the Lady Astronaut Universe and historical fantasy novels: The Glamourist Histories series and Ghost Talkers. The technical jargon flows well, despite me being utterly incapable of understanding it. The various issues the crews of the Nina and the Pinta deal with feel viscerally real and got my heart rate up several times. Kowal stills manages to create drama and ratchet up tension whenever you get too comfortable with the tales of the day-to-day of managing an interstellar voyage. The majority of the book takes place on the 320-day voyage to Mars, and so takes place in a confined space. Outside of the social issues, Kowal's writing still stands out. MRK does well to other characters confront Elma on this without sugar coating it, not treating the subject with kid gloves. And in fighting to end her barriers believes she is fighting for everyone and can speak for everyone. She believes that her struggles are largely the same as others who have faced and still face greater discrimination. Elma York embodies a lot of times what can be performative allieship.

What I find Mary Robinette Kowal does well with the character of Elma York is portray someone who, while facing her own battle with discrimination, can overlook or minimize the issues of discrimination that others face.

'The Fated Sky' inverses this, dealing much more heavily with issues of racism and bigotry, while still highlighting the issues of sexism that were heavily prevalent in that time. While 'The Calculating Stars' dealt a lot more with sexism and misogyny than racism, it did still deal with the racial tensions of the 1950s. Thankfully, I found that 'The Fated Sky' held up to its predecessor fantastically. I didn't realize it when I chose 'The Fated Sky' as my next read, but I enjoy the serendipity.

I had read 'The Calculating Stars' almost exactly one year ago today.

The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal