The Martian Contingency
Jan. 17th, 2026 10:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraThe Martian Contingency, Mary Robinette Kowal, 2025 Lady Astronaut series novel. As of the last one of these, The Relentless Moon, I had concluded this was "a good series I didn't like the first book of rather than a series I'm not into". As of this one I may be back to "a series I'm not really into that happened to have a couple of good books in the middle". It wasn't terrible - the first half really had me - but then I felt like it didn't pay off and didn't really go anywhere.
Two thoughts with spoilers: I am so tired of hearing about Elma's relationship with Nathaniel, omg. Found myself thinking "if only he had died in the accident", which... is probably not what Kowal was going for. I think part of the strength of Relentless Moon was that it was about different characters and this one should have been too, please keep your marriage forever offscreen Elma.
Secondly, I really disliked the way Kowal handled the central mystery of the First Expedition. The whole early part of the book, that's what's driving the tension - what's up with this mural, and the patched hole, and the blood, what is being covered up, and why - it was exciting! gripping! who doesn't like a mystery! And then we get to the second half, and I felt like Kowal was proxy-reprimanding the reader for wanting to know: "I wanted to know what had happened. I wanted to know exactly whose fault it was. And I'd seem the way gentiles leaned in to stories of Holocaust survivors as if their curiosity were the most important thing. "We are not making these people relive their trauma. We only need to know what was changed."" Okay, sure, trauma voyeurism is a thing about people's real-life stories, but this is a *fictional novel*, these people have been *invented* for the purpose of me being curious about what happened to them! They have no existence other than entertaining the reader! And basing your whole plot around an interesting mystery and then turning around and saying "fuck you you don't get to know what happened and you shouldn't want to" - that's a bullshit move, that's a cheap bait-and-switch. I did finish the book afterwards just to see if anything interesting would happen (not much) but Kowal pretty much lost me right there.
I did like the space abortion though, yay abortion. And I was amused by "we're going to divide the crew by gender but both the doctors are nominally female but conveniently one of them is actually a trans man whose transition can be quietly folded into "everyone on the surface has to be a man so he must be too"". I would have liked a short story from his perspective, while I'm wishing this novel had other POVs.
Two thoughts with spoilers: I am so tired of hearing about Elma's relationship with Nathaniel, omg. Found myself thinking "if only he had died in the accident", which... is probably not what Kowal was going for. I think part of the strength of Relentless Moon was that it was about different characters and this one should have been too, please keep your marriage forever offscreen Elma.
Secondly, I really disliked the way Kowal handled the central mystery of the First Expedition. The whole early part of the book, that's what's driving the tension - what's up with this mural, and the patched hole, and the blood, what is being covered up, and why - it was exciting! gripping! who doesn't like a mystery! And then we get to the second half, and I felt like Kowal was proxy-reprimanding the reader for wanting to know: "I wanted to know what had happened. I wanted to know exactly whose fault it was. And I'd seem the way gentiles leaned in to stories of Holocaust survivors as if their curiosity were the most important thing. "We are not making these people relive their trauma. We only need to know what was changed."" Okay, sure, trauma voyeurism is a thing about people's real-life stories, but this is a *fictional novel*, these people have been *invented* for the purpose of me being curious about what happened to them! They have no existence other than entertaining the reader! And basing your whole plot around an interesting mystery and then turning around and saying "fuck you you don't get to know what happened and you shouldn't want to" - that's a bullshit move, that's a cheap bait-and-switch. I did finish the book afterwards just to see if anything interesting would happen (not much) but Kowal pretty much lost me right there.
I did like the space abortion though, yay abortion. And I was amused by "we're going to divide the crew by gender but both the doctors are nominally female but conveniently one of them is actually a trans man whose transition can be quietly folded into "everyone on the surface has to be a man so he must be too"". I would have liked a short story from his perspective, while I'm wishing this novel had other POVs.
