Reading: The Relentless Moon (203/365)

[white_hart]

The third of Mary Robinette Kowal's Lady Astronaut novels, The Relentless Moon takes place simultaneously with the second, The Fated Sky, and focuses on events on Earth and the Moon during the Mars mission. This means a switch of narrator, from Elma York, the original Lady Astronaut, to another of the original female members of the space corps, senator's wife Nicole Wargin, and the novel follows Nicole as she tries to identify and unmask a saboteur in the recently-established lunar colony.

I loved this book. There's a pacy thriller plot, an interesting alt-history political background, and an engaging and sympathetic narrator. Nicole's struggles with anorexia are thoughtfully and sympathetically portrayed (I was unsurprised to discover, from the author's note at the end, that Kowal has also experienced anorexia), and I particularly loved that she's a woman in her fifties, given that middle-aged female protagonists are fairly few and far between in fiction. This may be my favourite of the series so far.

(Content note that the plot of the novel does include an epidemic, and reading about establishing quarantine procedures and trying to identify contacts still feels a bit close to home right now, so perhaps not one to read when you're feeling pandemiced out!)

Comments

[mrs_redboots]

I have read and loved the first two novels in the series, and the third is in my "To be read" folder; I think I'll come to it next, when I have finished - or paused - my current book.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, I read it in lockdown last year, having not realised there was pandemic content until I got to it. I enjoyed the book, but that really felt a bit much at the time!

[white_hart]

It's such a good series!

[white_hart]

A friend read it at about the same time and said she had to stop when she got to that bit.