Previous book here. Excerpt here. Stories that takes place after this book here and here.
This book is both similar and yet very different to its predecessor. It skips forward a few years in time to about 1961, where there's a lunar colony in space and Elma is starting to feel like more of a bus driver ferrying people up and down. And then a random group of "Earth Firsters" (folks who think the governments should focus on fixing up Earth rather than leaving it) invade and cause an incident. While everyone comes out of it all right and Elma uses her fame skills to help moderate the situation...well, not everyone in that group was white and for whatever crackassed racist reasons, the space department insists on harassing Elma's fellow African-American astronaut Leonard and insisting he was involved with them. He was not and Elma defends him, but racists gonna racist to some degree, apparently.
Elma gets asked to join the three year Mars mission for the sake of her fame, i.e. to make sure the space budget doesn't get cut. She accepts and then finds out that her friend Helen got kicked out so she could go. Elma feels bad about it and tries to raise some hell, but in the end there isn't anything she or Helen can do, sigh. This leads to her new Mars teammates being a wee bit hostile to her about the whole thing for a while.
The book covers the journey to Mars (about a year-ish long?), in which two teams of seven travel on the Nina and the Pinta, while they bring along a third supply ship, the Santa Maria. Unfortunately, South Africa donated a shit ton of money and insisted on sending along a blatantly racist astronaut, forcing the Pinta team to be whites-only. Elma, thank gawd, is on the Nina team. But hey, racist--just because you're on a different ship does not mean you can avoid people of color for ever. Just so you know!
Various incidents come up in space--including secretly romancing teammates, a bit of hostility here and there, Elma's secret code talk to her husband and Elma being stuck on a ship with Parker for three years--but when shit literally starts to go down (I recommend that you not be eating when the discussion of e.coli in space comes up, because holy shiiiiiiiit) and major crises start occurring, it's very gripping. I liked her teammates. Elma is still a well meaning ally who manages to step in it occasionally with her African-American teammates but mostly they get along eventually. Some of them are very sweet and I enjoyed the space radio bit they did at one point. But the real jewel to me was her evolving relationship with Parker. They may still argue and have differences, but Parker definitely is well meaning with regards to the team and tries to do his best. I also thought it was cool that he's apparently an omniglot and insisted on learning the languages of everyone on the trip down to Afrikaaas--I should look up the translations of what he said at certain points. He's even curious about learning the various Jewish languages Elma knows a bit of. Anyway, their relationship really evolved, to the point where he even finally understands why she's so uh, "humorless" to his sexist jokes. I won't spoil their best moment of all until I get to the spoiler space, but I was very touched.
About the only thing I thought was kind of off was technically not in the book. In the "About the History" section, well.... do you remember the drama when J.K. Rowling outed Dumbledore as being gay after all the books were done and people were all, "Oh, sure, NOW you mention it!?" about it?* The author does a similar kind of reveal, with the caveat of not feeling like she could cover it in the plot as is. I just thought, well, if you couldn't bring that up in the plot, why are you doing this after the fact? I appreciate that she is covering a wide variety of people in the series, but if you can't really do much of anything with that detail, why bother mentioning it so late? Again, more on that below the spoiler cut.
* Though frankly, once Grindelwald was mentioned I pretty much figured it out for myself there. I assumed this was done because of the politics at the time about gay people in children's lit, also that all the teachers at Hogwarts are single and it's not like most teachers want to share about their sex lives with their students anyway, so why would Dunbledore bring that up?
The end of the book felt like it was a little too wrapped up easily--it's a "one, two, skip a few, now we're on Mars!" sort of thing--and I assumed it was because this was sold as a duology. But it needs more, and it shall have more, because YESSSSS THERE'S GOING TO BE MORE BOOKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! More chatter about that below the spoiler cut as well.
Four and a half stars. Good job, good series, loving this!
Spoiler space
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Best moment for me was sad but good: Parker deduces that his wife, who's in an iron lung (yes, that's his big secret, he hides this to avoid the media), has died when there was a massive power outage due to terrorists in Kansas City. Elma is the only one that knows and she actually hugs him and teaches him prayers. D'awwwwww.
The after-book spoiler is that Kam is transgender. I just kind of feel like if you couldn't cover that in the plot as is, this was kind of weak to throw out after it was over. If you want to make the character trans in the 1960's--something the author notes would have been hard to do as an astronaut--well, I dunno how to handle it either, but this wasn't that great.
Okay, I decided to look up what is said n Afrikaans in this book:
Page 127:
"At the backyard monkey?"
"I find that offensive. It's again, and I get you permanently based."
I'm guessing DeBeer said something racist and Parker was trying to say "I find that offensive, do that again and you will be permanently grounded."
Later Heidi seems to be asking how many languages he knows:
"How many is that?"
"Eleven? No twelve. Twelve, but I'm really just conversation in six or seven of them."
Page 314:
"Start with ' nverskoning and let me believe it, or you will not get to Mars."
Yeah, I think a word got messed up there but yeah, I think Parker's threatening DeBeer.
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As for the next two books, the link above says:
First up is The Relentless Moon, which takes place while the First Mars Expedition is underway, so it’s a parallel novel to The Fated Sky and focuses on Nicole Wargin and Myrtle Lindholm in the Lunar colony. You can expect everything from church services to bridge parties, which all become more complicated in low gravity. And then a saboteur strikes...
The Derivative Base is back with Elma and Nathaniel on Mars and picks up not long after the end of The Fated Sky as they work with the new colonists to build a home on the planet. With that, you can expect to see frontier town issues on Mars, including prospecting for water, improvised engineering, and when things go wrong... which of course they will because it’s a novel, they only have eight days to try to solve it before the launch window to abort and return to Earth closes.
Hmmm. Well, I do love me some Nicole and she's barely in this (ditto Myrtle), so I'm intrigued to find out what goes on on the moon. Will Nicole narrate, or Myrtle, or both tag team? Also, moon!
Am a bit sad to wait on the Mars story continuation but I really look forward to more about it!
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