Genres: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Alternate History It’s been awhile since I’ve recommended multiple books, and it’s mainly because I’ve been stuck into series for the past few months (Kim Harrison’s Hollows series, Neal Asher’s Agent Cormac series, and others), which are less interesting to hear about! For the Christmas break, I decided to pick some of the books that have been on my TBR list for a very long time, and are supposed to be very good. As it happened, all three of the books I chose were pretty fantastic – and they all had great female protagonists! I started with Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars, which is an alternate history of spaceflight that won the 2019 Nebula, Locus, and Hugo awards (and has also been very highly recommended by Brandon Sanderson, of whom I am also a huge fan). It’s 1952, and the world as we know it is gone. A meteorite has destroyed Washington DC, triggering extinction-level global warming. To save humanity, the world unites to form the International Aerospace Coalition. Its mission: to colonise first the Moon, then Mars. Elma York, World War Two pilot and mathematician, dreams of becoming an astronaut – but…