The Martian Contingency

4 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
Elma York has reached Mars - living on the surface itself with her husband Nathaniel and a crew of others as the deputy administrator to prepare the way for colonists (or is the term offensive?) still in orbit. But there's something the administrator and many others aren't telling her - something that happened on the mission that built the first dome - and it's important.

Review
I enjoyed the first book in this series, The Calculating Stars, but somehow managed to miss the next two books. I had no trouble picking up the thread in this one, though.

As before, this is largely a well designed, well-written hard-ish SF book. There's more jargon than hard engineering or calculation, but those would in any event have been beyond my skills, and this came across as very credible on the technical front. Also as with the last book, I found the emotional elements appealing, but a little too soft-focus for my taste; the narrator in particular is just too sweet and thoughtful. There are some very welcome suggestions toward the end that she's not quite as wonderful as she believes herself to be, but they're somewhat undercut by the fact that the external view of her is presented as something of a good thing.

This is an alternate history, so of course there are differences from our timeline, and wish-fulfillment is a legitimate part of SFF. It does feel, though, as if Kowal is trying too hard to fit modern values to a less progressive time period – to write about a less enlightened past without offending any modern readers. I'm an idealist, but overall it feels awkward and not very credible, perhaps because I was around in the time period in question, and the attitudes in question just didn't fit with my experience. I'd note that the progressive viewpoints decidedly did not extend to animals, who are cruelly sacrificed to human desires. True to the period, but animals are clearly not part of the alternate timeline's enlightened worldview.

The treatment of religious ritual feels equally heavy-handed – not one goes by without an explanation of its historical context and meaning. Maybe that's meant to be part of the narrator's culture, or maybe it's just Kowal demonstrating how well she's done her background research. Either way, it feels very ... educational rather than organic.

Overall, a well-written story with a welcome women's perspective for the time, but undermined by the awkward insertion of anachronistic modern values.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.