The Martian Contingency

This is the final book in the Lady Astronaut series, with Elma York landing on Mars to help establish a base. This book has the mix of space stuff, politics, relationships, and technical trouble that you would expect from the rest of series, but fundamentally, this book is about Elma learning to be a leader and it's a good capstone on her emotional and professional journey.

Unfortunately, most of the action in this book takes place off page. Early on Elma realizes people are covering something up, but that event has already happened. There's some feint that maybe more problems from Earth First terrorists could happen, but this does not materialize. And sure, there are some real consequences from the coverup, but the majority of them also happen off page. It is not as if I am reading the Lady Astronaut series for action and adventure, but it's hard not to feel like there's a more engaging story being told next door. (To that end, I wonder if this book would have been better told from Leonard's perspective.)

One thing I do really appreciate about this book is seeing Elma and Nathaniel's relationship continuing to grow. For me, Mary Robinette Kowal's writing excels at telling a story with believably married characters who each have their own foibles and needs, and I feel like that's the case both here and in her Glamourist Histories series. It's nice to see the two of them care about each other, but also argue and disagree and be understandably frustrated with each other in a way that I don't see many books engage with.