The Calculating Stars: A Woman's Fight To Be An Astronaut in an Alternate Timeline

I'm seriously interested in woman aviators.  The very first post on this blog was a review of a novel dealing with Russian WWII ace Lydia Litvyak which appeared here.   My most recent post on this blog dealing with a woman pilot was a review of The Lost Pilots which I wrote about a year ago. It can be found here. I'm also fascinated by woman astronauts.

It's these enthusiasms that made me such a fan of Mary Robinette Kowal's  Lady Astronaut series which she began with a succession of several short stories that I read first.  They can be found in Kowal's anthology, Word Puppets.  Though I have just learned that there is a more recent Lady Astronaut story that I haven't yet read called "Articulated Restraint" that takes place between the first two Lady Astronaut novels.  I immediately purchased it from Amazon.

My only problem with reading the first Lady Astronaut novel, The Calculating Stars, was setting aside the time to do it when I have so many review commitments.  A buddy read on a Goodreads group gave me an excuse to shoehorn it in between a background book for a July blog tour novel, and an ARC I won  that I'm supposed to be tweeting about this month.  I'm just glad that I finally got to The Calculating Stars.

                           

The protagonist, Elma York, was a Women's Airforce  Service Pilot (WASP) in WWII.  I'm a WASP afficionado too.  On this blog,  I wrote a review of  Marge Piercy's  Gone To Soldiers which contained a character who was a WASP.  You can read that review here. 

 Elma also had a strong background in mathematics and physics which qualified her to be a computer.   Before the existence of machines called computers, humans known as computers did calculations.  Many readers will have learned about them from the movie called Hidden Figures about African-American women who were computers for the American space program.

In the Lady Astronaut series the American space program was launched under different circumstances.  It takes place in an alternate timeline in which a meteor fell on Washington D.C. in 1952, killed a great many people and altered Earth's climate.  It was decided that finding a new home for humanity should be an urgent priority.   Although I was pleased to see that the space program was regarded as vitally important, I wondered why there wasn't any serious consideration being given to the possibility of interventions that would prevent severe climate change.      

I also have a small quibble over Elma's Jewish background.  Her ancestors were apparently Yiddish speaking Ashkenazis like mine.  Yet she says that they settled in Charleston, South Carolina in the 18th century.  The Jews that arrived in Charleston during that period were Sephardic.  Sephardic Jews were originally from Spain.  They spoke a Spanish derived language called Ladino rather than Yiddish.   According to  the Jewish Virtual Library's page about Charleston's Jewish history here, there was no Ashkenazi synagogue in Charleston until 1854. 

Yet I was so inspired by Elma's struggle to open the space  program to women who were pilots.  So I'd definitely give this novel five stars.

                                               

                           

Reign of Mist: A Satisfying Middle Book of a Trilogy

Reign of Mist was sent to me by author Helen Scheuerer via Book Funnel, so that I could catch up on the earlier books in the YA epic fantasy Oremere trilogy before participating in the blog tour for the final novel in the trilogy, War of the Mist. I reviewed the first volume, Heart of Mist on this blog here.   My non-spoiler review for Reign of Mist is below.

                       

   In Reign of Mist, the characters that were introduced in Heart of Mist are developed further.  This means that these familiar characters and their relationships are portrayed with more depth.  The characters that were new to me opened up doors that allowed me to understand more about Scheuerer's world.  I consider characterization the strongest talent of this author.  She understands people and how to make characters come alive for readers.

In the acknowledgements Helen Scheuerer states that Reign of Mist focuses on the bond between sisters.  There are characters who are sisters that are prominent in this book.  I can see how the sister bond inspired Scheuerer to write Reign of Mist, but for me the central issue is the difficulty of weighing the consequences of actions.  Indeed this  novel shows that in some circumstances, the full ramifications  of a decision may not even be imaginable.

The ending of Reign of Mist seemed more resolved than the first novel in the trilogy.   It didn't feel like a cliffhanger.   I also thought that this is what was supposed to happen.  It makes for a satisfying reading experience.

                       

                         

The Raven and the Reindeer: A Snow Queen Retelling For Pride Month

When The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher was nominated as a June Book of the Month on a Goodreads group,  I was most interested in the Sami character that the nominator mentioned.  I have been interested in the Sami since childhood when my favorite book was Lapland Outlaw by Arthur Catherall.  The books that I've reviewed on this blog dealing with the Sami have been the thriller Forty Days Without Shadow by Olivier Truc  which I reviewed here and the mystery In The Month of the Midnight Sun by Cecilia Ekbäck which I reviewed here.  Although there is indeed a Sami character who plays an important role in The Raven and the Reindeer, she doesn't appear until late in the narrative.

Nevertheless, there were other very good reasons for me to read this T. Kingfisher book which I found delightful.  I'm glad that I purchased it on Amazon.

                             

The Raven and the Reindeer didn't become a book of the month, but there is currently an ongoing buddy read of the novel.  This is an adult retelling of The Snow Queen, a fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson.   Participants, including me, have marveled about the elements from HCA's original tale that Kingfisher included which we hadn't remembered.  So it could be considered a fairly faithful retelling with several differences.

One difference is that the two crows in HCA's version are combined into one talking raven who is very snarky and entertaining.

Another more significant difference is that the protagonist needs to change shape in order to survive the cold of the journey to the Snow Queen's palace far in the north. Livli, the Sami character, has a very interesting idea about shapechanging.   She says that someone won't have barriers to such a transformation "when your own shape does not quite fit."  To me, this implies that non-cisgender individuals would be the humans who are most open to changing into another species.   Kingfisher doesn't actually explore this idea.  To my best knowledge, no one has written fiction about a pre-operative transsexual who also changes into an animal.   If someone has written fantasy or science fiction with that focus, I would love to read it.

The main reason why The Raven and the Reindeer was nominated for Pride Month is because it contains a lesbian relationship which definitely wasn't in HCA's original tale.  This relationship provided an ending to this retelling that made for a much better story for LGBT friendly readers.