Review: The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

[AndyC]

Discuss @Ares96 's review here

 

[Gary Oswald]

Excellent review of a book I'd previously not heard of @Ares96.

Makes me want to read this now though much like Thande's world gets hit by a comet thing, there's something quite depressing about ah where the world leaders are told about an approaching disastrous change in climate and take quick and decisive action to preserve the human race from that threat.

 

[Thande]

Makes me want to read this now though much like Thande's world gets hit by a comet thing, there's something quite depressing about ah where the world leaders are told about an approaching disastrous change in climate and take quick and decisive action to preserve the human race from that threat.

To an extent I think it's a reaction against those scenarios where it's treated as nothing we can do, governments are useless and it's every man for himself, etc. Of course, a point I was making with mine (and Cixin Liu does something similar in his Third Body Problem trilogy) - the quick and decisive action they take might not be one you'd like to be on the receiving end of.

 

[Gary Oswald]

To an extent I think it's a reaction against those scenarios where it's treated as nothing we can do, governments are useless and it's every man for himself, etc. Of course, a point I was making with mine (and Cixin Liu does something similar in his Third Body Problem trilogy) - the quick and decisive action they take might not be one you'd like to be on the receiving end of.

Yeah but say what you like about the tenets of South American colonialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

 

[M_Kresal]

Only a couple of years late finding this review, finding it on the articles index thanks to reading sequel novel The Fated Sky at the moment and wondering if anyone had reviewed the original novel. A solid review, though it's worth pointing to Kowal's 2014 online story We Interrupt This Broadcast which sets up precisely why the asteroid hits when and where it does. It's goes into more of the PODs for the Lady Astronaut series, including a detail that no one will likely ever discover in-universe.

 

[Ares96]

Very interesting. As you may have guessed, I hadn’t seen that when I wrote the review, but I’ll certainly look it over now.