This book continues the story which was started in the first Hugo Award-winning book, The Calculating Stars, a few years later. Moon travel has changed more or less commonplace, and the main character is working as a “bus driver” driving the shuttle between moon base and lunar orbit. Mostly, for publicity reasons, she is elected to take part to the first Mars mission, pushing another woman away at the same time. Most of the book is about training (in far too many details) for the mission and about the actual mission. The novel ends (not counting the epilogue) when they reach their destination.
I found this book better than its predecessor. There weren’t (as many) places where nothing happened. However, the misogyny and racial issues were brought on with a subtlety of a giant sledgehammer hit on the head. Also, it's a three-year mission with apparent little evaluation of psychological compatibility and a white man from South-Africa, of course, by extreme racism by the law of clichés’ – I would imagine that there might have been more “mellow” people to choose from. All in all, a bit better and, perhaps, slightly better-written book than the first part.
384 pp,
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