The Relentless Moon

by

Paperback

English language

Published April 29, 2020 by Solaris.

ISBN:
978-1-78108-881-4
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5 stars (4 reviews)

It's 1963, and riots and sabotage plague the space program. The climate change caused by the Meteor is becoming more and more clear, but tensions are rising, and the IAC's goal of getting humanity off Earth is threatened. Astronaut Nicole Wargin lives two lives; one as a politician's wife on Earth, and the other as an astronaut on the newly-established Moon Base. But when sabotage strikes, she finds that her two worlds are colliding - with deadly consequences.

8 editions

reviewed The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal

An amazing thriller in space

5 stars

It's amazingly hard to mix crime fiction with science fiction. The Relentless Moon manages to create a mystery that works in space. This takess place is an alternate history where a meteor hit Earth in the 1950s and humanity tries to settle Mars in the 1960s to save itself from massive global warming. While the Lady Astronaut Elma York heads to Mars in The Fated Sky, fellow astronaut Nicole Wargin heads to the moon for visit to ferry colonists to the base that will be used for staging future trips to Mars. However, while there things start going wrong, and it's quickly apparent that the subversive Earth First organization has a mole in the space program on the Moon. Things get worse. The subversive plot reads as something that could happen. No weird coincidences. Bad guys that make sense psychologically. Our hero is both competent and flawed.

I listened to …

reviewed The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Other Lady Astronaut

5 stars

At first I was surprised that it was Elma's voice I was reading. But in the end this writer is just wonderful and I found Nicole Wargin a wonderful character to explore.

Like Elma there are secrets to this character that I will not explore. I will say that the time period of the third book takes place at the same time of the second book. You don't need to read book 2 but there is a spoiler in this book if you hadn't read it.

All the characters were great and the Mary Robinette Kowal never shies from either the misogyny nor the racism prevalent for the time period of this book. Nothing is shocking but it's beautifully written and very much a part of 1960s.

I do hope that if Kowal continues the Lady Astronaut series she adds some LGBTQ characters.

reviewed The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal

Review of 'The Relentless Moon' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Still an excellent hard sci-fi story, but this one had annoyances the previous installments didn't. The viewpoint character for this one spouts way too much macho bullshit for my taste. Also, even though sexism and racism always were right at the front of the Lady Astronaut stories, the gender war here seems relentless and really tiresome. Also one of my least favourite tropes "I'm not going to tell my loved one(s) things to protect them" rears its ugly head; one of the reasons I enjoyed The Calculating Stars was its utter refusal to deploy poor communication as a plot point.

Despite occasionally grinding my teeth at the points mentioned above, this is still a very good, very hard science fiction story about living on the Moon. The plot is effective yet non-convoluted, and when things get nasty, you really feel the blows. Definitely recommended.

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