I speak English. My Amazon account is set to English. My Alexa listens to my English commands and replies in English. Except for new book notifications. I saw a pulsing yellow light on the dot. I've memorised all of the various signs and portents the accurs'd device can summon up, so I asked it (in English) what notifications it had for me. It replied, naturally, in German. I couldn't grab an audio recording in time, and I've no idea which command invokes a repetition. But the Alexa app…
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Let's get this out of the way first. I freakin' love Mary Robinette Kowal's Lady Astronaut Series. She has created this amazingly rich and detailed universe, full of fleshed-out characters engaging in daring-do. So when this earlier novel was cheap on Amazon, I picked it up. The "Glamourist Histories" novels were written several years before the Astronette books. And, I'll be honest, it shows. The plot is basically "Jane Austen But They Can Do Magic". Or, to more modern ears, "The Witches …
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The Earth is coming to the boiling point as the climate disaster of the Meteor strike becomes more and more clear, but the political situation is already overheated. Riots and sabotage plague the space program. The IAC's goal of getting as many people as possible off Earth before it becomes uninhabitable is being threatened. Elma York is on her way to Mars, but the Moon colony is still being established. Her friend and fellow Lady Astronaut Nicole Wargin is thrilled to be one of those…
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The Fated Sky looks forward to 1961, when mankind is well-established on the moon and looking forward to its next step: journeying to, and eventually colonizing, Mars. Of course, the noted Lady Astronaut Elma York would like to go, but could the International Aerospace Coalition ever stand the thought of putting a woman on such a potentially dangerous mission? I rushed to buy this book the minute I finished its prequel - The Calculating Stars. Mary Robinette Kowal has created an…
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A meteor decimates the U.S. government. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated timeline in the earth’s efforts to colonize space. One of these new entrants in the space race is Elma York. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots and scientists involved with the program, it doesn’t take long before Elma begins to wonder why women can’t go into space, too... This book is now only 99p on Amazon and I urge you to get it. Within the first dozen pages I knew I was g…
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