Rated The Calculating Stars 4/10
<div>I just did not vibe with this one, though the beginning of the book made me hopeful that this would be an enjoyable exploration of an alternate history space program. In this version of Earth, a meteorite has wiped out much of the east coast in 1952, and Elma, our protagonist, is the one who notices that this will be a slow-moving extinction level event, and since her husband is an engineer in the fledgling space program, she gets an audience with the people who can do something about it. I mean, sure we could also hear about how everyone is getting their food after a long winter and other apocalyptic considerations, but aside from briefly mentioning it in the beginning, she is barely troubled by it.<br><br>Her husband is always perfect to her, always supportive, represses his anger with others through grimaces and tight fists. We hear a lot about it when someone is mean to his wife. Because 1950s misogyny still abounds, but nary a thought like that passes through sweet lil Nathaniel's head. Barf. And I am of course not against sex scenes in books, but these are SO cheesy. PLEASE I do not want to hear rising rocket puns every time you two get a moment alone.<br><br>Everything else is hamfisted 2010s white feminist #Representation. Of course she's friends with a diverse group of pilots who all get such personalities and depths as .... being pilots. From other countries. They pepper in, ah, how you say, phrases from their native language. The French lady's last name is Lebourgeois. The most misogynist astronaut is named, I shit you not, STETSON PARKER. (Apparently we have Brandon Sanderson to blame for that character, according to her acknowledgements, and believe me, I will blame.) Elsa and Nathaniel are Jewish, but their last name is York, for some reason.<br><br>And just when you think, hey maybe we'll hear about some interesting space stuff, a real alternate history besides the stuff in the beginning... No! Not really! We're mostly going to hear about Elsa's struggles with ~aNxIEtY~ because poor genius mathematician and WASP pilot barfs if too many people look at her, see. Reporters are scary and therefore we must spend the majority of the book hearing about her stomach issues anytime someone mentions them.<br><br>And if you know enough about space to know why people need to be quarantined beforehand, then why are you having non-quarantined people interact with astronauts if their mission was only temporarily delayed??<br><br>Just so much bugged me, and I am baffled that it won so many awards in 2018. I will not be reading the next one in the series. Next season of For All Mankind can't come soon enough.</div>