The Relentless Moon

Executive Summary: I really love this series, and I hope she continues writing more books in the series. This was really good. Best of the series so far. 4.5 Stars.

Audiobook: I'm generally leary of authors narrating their own work but Mary Robinette Kowal is a great narrator in her own right and does a fantastic job narrating this as usual.

Full Review
So I read this one earlier this year. I was struggling with writing my goodreads reviews before peak covid. I've had a lot of trouble reading books in general this year. By this point in the year I was back to work part time (working 40 hours every other week) which likely means my listening was a bit uneven.

I may or may not go back and write reviews for all the other books I skipped over, but we'll see how motivated I'm feeling. I wanted to write this one because as we're approaching the end of year, it felt wrong that one of my top reads of 2020 only had a 1 sentence review.

I hadn't read the blurb at all before pre-ordering this one. So it was a big surprise when I learned this book wasn't following Elma, but was instead told from the perspective of Nicole Wargin, who had been a fairly minor character in the first two books.

Initially I was a bit skeptical of the PoV change, but by the end this has become my favorite book of the series. Nicole is able to explore new aspects of the world of the last two books that Elma never could. I'd really love to see her do this with other characters in the future.

In particular I found the exploration of eating disorders to be well done. Just like Elma has his issues with anxiety, I love how this series shows characters who are successful at what they do and refuse to be defined by a single aspect of their lives.

In a year that's been a struggle for me to read, this was a nice reprieve. I'm there on day one if she writes a book 4.