Oh dear. I truly wanted to enjoy this book. I give it three stars, because I found the quality of the writing itself to be really good. Nicely formed sentences, good cadence, intelligent.

But I took away 2 for the plot.

I didn't know what I was getting into with this book. I saw it in the "New Science Fiction" section, read the synopsis, and thought I'd try to support a female science fiction author. When I picked up the book and read a couple pages, I thought the prose was well crafted (I'm getting increasingly picky about that).

SPOILERS AHEAD btw

So when we started off the book by having women thrust out of working by a misogynistic government, I thought that was interesting. When 5 women astronauts who had been cherry-picked to head a mission to the first "Goldilocks" planet, but then were ousted so that men with less training could take over, decided to steal the rocket and do the mission anyway, I thought that was a fun ride.

But as I continued through the book, I found things increasingly improbable. When it was continually implied that random people could "hack the encryption" on various systems, as a software developer, I rolled my eyes. It's the software equivalent of the classic "Enhance!" trope in movies. But all that was okay.

But in chapter 9, at the end, when the lead character discovers she got pregnant the night before launch...by her step brother....that's when I thought in my head, "Oh lord here we go." And yes, it got sillier after that. First of all, I was supposed to have sympathy for what was basically an incestuous relationship. Note: I do NOT have sympathy for that.

Then you get into the parts of a virus being engineered to kill everyone on earth, so the smuggled embryos the female Elon Musk character had managed to smuggle on board can start a "new civilization". So the inevitable mutiny happens, the women who (for pretty undefined reasons, given the risk and vilification they would receive) decided to steal the spaceship, jettison the "cryo" backup crew, and keep pushing forward....decide to TURN BACK, with the space baby and its mysteriously convenient baby spacesuit and space c-section.....well, I'll be honest here.

I felt as though what was clearly meant to be a flag-waving feminist novel, shot itself in the foot. With the silly pregnancy, and all the crazy interpersonal ridiculous drama that overshot any of the interesting science, this was my conclusion: This book made the argument that if the men would have just been allowed to do the mission, they would have gotten it done, instead of having crazy emotional catfights, turning back, abandoning ship and killing 1/3 of the population, and a totally improbable pregnancy. I REALLY doubt that's the point the author wanted to make. But here we are.

I wanted this to be a book about female engineers being equally footed and discovering true life on a another planet. What I was left with was an improbably "Real Housewives of Cape Canaveral: The Crazy Billionaire Science Edition". It was truly a let down. I'd try to read other things by the author, since hopefully they wouldn't go to the plot improbabilities that this one did. But as a STEM female, I felt this made the exact opposite points, and delivered the exact opposite ideas, of the uplifting book I hoped this to be.

One more note: This is an extremely dark and depressing book for the pandemic. The world in it is dying of a pandemic and global warming and misogyny, so if you are looking for any sort of escapism, this is NOT. IT.