The Fated Sky

I absolutely loved The Calculating Stars, so the cast was great, and the arc between Elma and Parker was very realistic and heartfelt. The intro was also very good, showing us the Earth First movement as real people, instead of just an off-page bunch of nitwits.

But overall, I find it a bit disappointing. Most of all, the social commentary is much more on the nose. Not that the misogyny and racism were (are) not real, they very much are, and it's extremely important to talk about them in the open. It's just that there were scenes whose only goal was to showcase someone's chauvinistic views. E.g., the south-african "villain" was a racist caricature and completely one-dimensional - it seemed that "hating non-whites" was written specifically in his mission goals.

Definitely worth a read, but suffers from a bad case of the middle-book syndrome.