So this was a read that was a classic 'man I wish I actually liked this book as much as I wanted to' book. I read it for my sci-fi/fantasy book club, and the premise of it is really interesting: a meteor strikes the earth in the early 1950's, and in addition to causing initial chaos and upheaval and all that, scientists are also able to calculate that within ten or so years the earth will warm to a degree that will not sustain life. So there is a push for the space program to work to set up a colony in space for the survival of the species, and of course any kind of successful long term colony would require that both men and women become astronauts.
Elma York, who was a female pilot during WWII and is married to a scientist in the space program, is a natural candidate for women to be included in this colony. But the entire book after the initial aftermath to the meteor strike is just two steps forward and one step back repeated ad nauseam, as she's confronted over and over again with sexist roadblocks and red tape, and also learns the same valuable life lessons about how no matter how difficult it's been for her, it's even harder for black women, a truth that she never actually seems to remember that she's learned before. A friend of mine mentioned that the bureaucratic nonsense that she deals with felt very true to life in terms of how government works, but something being realistic doesn't necessarily make it a good or compelling narrative, and I just found myself getting so impatient for the actual story to start. And of course it's actually the first book in a series, and so the story in fact barely does start even by the end of the book.
I actually found the first part of the story to be the most interesting, when the world is dealing with the ramifications of a major meteor strike only seven years after the end of WWII. But the book itself is only interested in that major world event to the extent that it's a good catalyst for the space program to be both fast tracked and forced to include women, and the narrative wasn't compelling enough for me to stop myself from pulling on the thread of how else such a major event would have changed everything. This book has been lauded by many and clearly must work for other people in a way it simply didn't for me, but I felt at many points of the story that I would have enjoyed reading the historical and scientific works that the author read as part of her research far more than I did the narrative result.
Grade: C
Elma York, who was a female pilot during WWII and is married to a scientist in the space program, is a natural candidate for women to be included in this colony. But the entire book after the initial aftermath to the meteor strike is just two steps forward and one step back repeated ad nauseam, as she's confronted over and over again with sexist roadblocks and red tape, and also learns the same valuable life lessons about how no matter how difficult it's been for her, it's even harder for black women, a truth that she never actually seems to remember that she's learned before. A friend of mine mentioned that the bureaucratic nonsense that she deals with felt very true to life in terms of how government works, but something being realistic doesn't necessarily make it a good or compelling narrative, and I just found myself getting so impatient for the actual story to start. And of course it's actually the first book in a series, and so the story in fact barely does start even by the end of the book.
I actually found the first part of the story to be the most interesting, when the world is dealing with the ramifications of a major meteor strike only seven years after the end of WWII. But the book itself is only interested in that major world event to the extent that it's a good catalyst for the space program to be both fast tracked and forced to include women, and the narrative wasn't compelling enough for me to stop myself from pulling on the thread of how else such a major event would have changed everything. This book has been lauded by many and clearly must work for other people in a way it simply didn't for me, but I felt at many points of the story that I would have enjoyed reading the historical and scientific works that the author read as part of her research far more than I did the narrative result.
Grade: C
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