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A review by bug_lightyear
The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal
4.5
I don't really like murder stories, but aside from that I loved the disabled main character and her service dog. Pain takes a lot of space and a lot of words, and gives a good view into what it's like to have a chronic condition.
Main character is a very smart and rich engineer who moved on to something else after a traumatic accident while testing a prototype. Another character is a super famous robotics engineer and is also a woman.
The ship is built to accommodate 3 different types of gravity (Earth, Lunar and Mars) and the physics of it seem plausible but I dit not put too much effort into understanding it. The image of the ship didn't display properly on my ereader.
Main character uses sometimes a cane sometimes no mobility aids.
I like that there is some futuristic technology to improve her life but doesn't magically heal the disability. At the end the author says it is based on an already existing technology called Deep Brain Stimulator her mum has for Parkinson's and it's actually fascinating.
Characters introduce themselves with pronouns and the gender neutral honorific Mx is used for everyone. Side characters have a mix of pronouns including they/them and a minor character uses ze/zir. There is also some short dialogues in (Lunar) French and they use ael as a gender neutral pronoun, from context it isn't clear if they use it for everyone, for specific people or like a neutral equivalent to they/them.
Each chapter starts with a cocktail recipe, some non alcoholic. They don't display well in very large characters on my ereader but still readable.
In the acknowledgements, the author says she rewrote some parts of the book to include masking as she says she "can no longer imagine a future in which they aren't part of our lives". In this book they are mostly used for privacy to avoid being recognised in public.
Most authors post 2020 conveniently ignore the ongoing covid pandemic, say it's over, or pretend it was never there in the first place so I love seeing an author who consciously writes masking as a thing in a distant future.
Main character is a very smart and rich engineer who moved on to something else after a traumatic accident while testing a prototype. Another character is a super famous robotics engineer and is also a woman.
The ship is built to accommodate 3 different types of gravity (Earth, Lunar and Mars) and the physics of it seem plausible but I dit not put too much effort into understanding it. The image of the ship didn't display properly on my ereader.
Main character uses sometimes a cane sometimes no mobility aids.
I like that there is some futuristic technology to improve her life but doesn't magically heal the disability. At the end the author says it is based on an already existing technology called Deep Brain Stimulator her mum has for Parkinson's and it's actually fascinating.
Characters introduce themselves with pronouns and the gender neutral honorific Mx is used for everyone. Side characters have a mix of pronouns including they/them and a minor character uses ze/zir. There is also some short dialogues in (Lunar) French and they use ael as a gender neutral pronoun, from context it isn't clear if they use it for everyone, for specific people or like a neutral equivalent to they/them.
Each chapter starts with a cocktail recipe, some non alcoholic. They don't display well in very large characters on my ereader but still readable.
In the acknowledgements, the author says she rewrote some parts of the book to include masking as she says she "can no longer imagine a future in which they aren't part of our lives". In this book they are mostly used for privacy to avoid being recognised in public.
Most authors post 2020 conveniently ignore the ongoing covid pandemic, say it's over, or pretend it was never there in the first place so I love seeing an author who consciously writes masking as a thing in a distant future.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders, Murder, and Alcohol