Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

The CBR12 Book Bingo Reading Challenge Has Begun—Get the Official Card and Play through October 31!

> FAQ Home
> Tag: Mary Robinette Kowal

I thought this one was better than the first.

The Fated Sky (Lady Astronaut, #2) by Mary Robinette Kowal

by Leave a Comment

So I never actually wrote a review of the first book in this series. I review-amnestied it late last year, in the 40+ reviews I just gave up on because I let my review backlog get Out Of Control. We read this for my IRL book club, and we were all excited to read about lady astronauts doing science and winning against misogyny, but all of us had very mixed feelings about it. I flew through the book, but also had problems with it at […]

Disappointing

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

by Leave a Comment

When my book club chose our next read, The Calculating Stars (2018) by Mary Robinette Kowal, I’d never heard of it. The premise was promising, though, and from the outside, it looked pretty good. Apparently, it is the first book in “The Lady Astronaut” series and the winner of some awards, including the Nebula and Hugo for Best Novel. In an alternate history of the 1950’s, a meteor strikes the Earth, causing tragedy and destruction as well as the promise of an inhospitable planet. The race to […]

Breaking the Glass Ceiling to Space

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

by 1 Comment

Elma York and her husband Nathaniel are on a long deserved vacation in the Poconos after a very busy time at work, when an world altering event happens: a meteor strikes DC and the eastern seaboard, leading to massive destruction, earthquakes and tidal waves.  If Elma and Nathaniel had been home, they never would have survived, and it’s a miracle they make it out of the Poconos alive, using their unique expertise from working in the space program to predict some of the immediate after […]

If only we had started tackling climate change 60 years ago

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

by Leave a Comment

CBR11 Bingo: Award Winner I read almost no alternate history – but I absolutely love the thought experiments. I read this book for two reasons: I don’t think I read enough award winners, and I know I don’t read enough books written by women. Most of my reading is for pleasure. I’m not necessarily trying to challenge myself, or expand my horizons. I’ve tried reading books held in high esteem by people much smarter than I, and I even tried reading more literature a couple […]

As I sat there with my eyes squeezed shut, the light faded.

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

by Leave a Comment

This alternate history novel starts in 1952 with a meteor hitting the Atlantic Ocean and wiping out a significant portion on the eastern US coast. We see the event through the eyes of Dr. Elma York, a mathematician married to a rocket engineer. They begin to understand the implications of the event. Elma becomes prominent for calculating the size and basic shape of the meteor while her husband begins work for designing rockets. What has become clear is we have witnessed an event that will […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo
  3. Google Pay