A review by verumsolum
The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal

5.0

Wow… I… want to meet Dr Elma York, not just read about her. Mary Robinette Kowal's writing has, all along, turned Elma into a character who feels more real than fictional to me, and I would love to sit in a café with her and chat about her experiences, which through these four books have brought me so much to imagine. In some ways, I'm still that child who was fantasizing about seeing things and going places where I have never been before. On Earth, I've seen some things that go far beyond the experiences of my first couple of decades of life. But as I grow older, I am beginning to realize that I need to be content with many of those dreams remaining dreams.

But this is supposed to be reviewing the fourth Lady Astronaut novel, not a self-indulgent personal reflection. And I need to give Kowal a ton of credit: I normally hate fiction where there's a great big secret and things would be much simpler if people would just open their — mouths and communicate. But Kowal has

taken a shared secret, but left the reader and most characters unaware of it. But the secret is weaved in as needed, not exaggerated. And when the secret is revealed, it makes sense of things we've wondered about in this book and fits with what we know from earlier in the series. (Actually, there are other secrets exposed in this book, too… but none of them feel like they are contrived to give the author another source of conflict and point of plot. They feel natural, because Kowal has worked to make those secrets as meaningful and real to the characters as they would be in real life: no more, but also no less.)

My only regret: reading this book too quickly. I want to still be in that world!