I enjoyed this a lot! It's a post-apocalypse story, and also Hidden Figures!

I expected it to be Hidden Figures. I didn't expect the apocalypse, which was actually a GREAT apocalypse. Despite the permeation of pop culture with the supposed dinosaur asteroid, it turns out I had exactly zero mental concept of what it would be like if a huge meteorite actually hit the earth. Very interesting to think about.

The characters were fine. Elma takes up by far the most space as the main character, with her supportive genius husband and her group of female friends as distant secondary players. There's work put into Elma's character - her journey with the crippling anxiety she suffers from is a strong presence throughout the book, to the point where I was almost wondering if maybe she shouldn't be allowed to go to space.

In contrast, there's not a lot of loving work put into the relationships and how they develop. This is a book about SCIENCE and FEMINISM and that's IT, thank you very much.

There's more feminism than science, and there's a decent amount of science. There are also a lot of fade-to-black sex scenes with unfortunate rocket-themed dirty talk. I didn't necessarily believe the girl solidarity moment where they corner Betty in the bathroom to threaten her and then end up group hugging.

My favorite scene was the one where they're at mission control and have to talk the astronauts through a near-deadly situation. I love The Martian-style space problem solving. I'll definitely be reading the next book, and I hope there's a lot more space involved.