After watching the anime and reading the light novels, and seeing how little popularity Irina seems to have, I thought it deserved me sitting down and writing a few words about it which I seldom do. - POTENTIAL spoiler warning! - - NOTE: This is not a professional review. If that's what you want, search elsewhere. This is the thoughts of an average reader that the work left him with. I liked the anime quite a bit; it was different. I loved the alternate Cold War theme. The LN dives deeper into it and primarily the Space Race, though, for the history buffs, you have to keep inmind this really is an alternate universe so don't expect too much historic accuracy.

As I ate up the volumes I met quite a few new characters. Most of them, especially the ones you spend a little more time with, I loved! Volumes 3 and 4 spend very little time with Lev and Irina to be frank and I've read online and the general sentiment seems to be that people didn't like them very much. I myself enjoyed them quite a bit. While the first two volumes take place in the East, the third and fourth volume take us to the West. The new characters that are introduced, I quite enjoyed, as well as the action they are involved in. While Lev and Irina are cosmonauts, our primary PoV in the west is through the eyes of a couple of computer engineers - one of them is a human, the other one is not. That gives unique perspective on the more "on-the-ground" side of development of space travel as well as giving you a decent bit of very early computer tech to geek out over. V3 & V4 also give a glimpse at the rest of the world and you start to see the sheer contrast between life on the two opposite blocks as well as the different mentality of the people altogether.

Volumes 5-7 start tying things together, seeing the many new characters get to meet and interact with one another. The "end goal" is - spoiler alert - the successful landing on the Moon. In those last volumes you get more technical details on rocketry and space travel, the nerds like myself would rejoice, I am sure. Politics have without question a huge role in how things are allowed to play out, although, as I already mentioned earlier, this is an alternate take on the Cold War. There are very dark moments in those later volumes which smack you from dreaming of reaching the moon right back to the harsh reality. From there on, you really start to feel on edge; a feeling that only builds stronger throughout V5-V7.

Now, the ending. Here is where people will split. I think some will like it, some will hate it. I myself am not certain in which camp I fall into; I accept it for what it is. For those who have watched the S01 of the anime, you probably remember the hopeful feeling you get at the end, while still leaving things quite open. The light novel follows a similar trend. In the afterword of V7, the author themselves wrote that they intentionally cut out basically the entire last chapter as well as the epilogue. The story ends in a very open fashion. The author quite clearly intended for the readers to imagine how the future plays out for our favorite characters. The tone at the end is hopeful, so the prospect of a happy future is very plausible. The fears of the characters are explored well throughout the story, so it is up to the reader's imagination to decide whether out beloved characters would have a well-deserved happy future or if their worries and fears would end up justified in the end. This open-endedness always divides people. For the longest time I have preferred a solid conclusion to stories; it provides a sort of stability. That is why a part of me wishes we got a bit more closure on the people whose lives we followed for 12 whole years throughout the novels. But. With time, I have grown to appreciate the more open-to-interpretation endings. Some of the greatest stories and movies have had such endings. At any rate, I think most characters got enough development to not need that concrete closure. I believe the author's intentions were clear enough with where the characters' relationships are headed, and with the ending that we do get you are encouraged to envision the future that YOU want the characters to have so that you as the reader are left satisfied in the end. The afterword for the last volume the author intentionally left online only so it might be a bit of a hassle to find, but I do recommend reading it if you do end up reading the light novel.

All in all, I am satisfied and I'm glad I read it. If you are like me and found about Irina through the anime but just want more - don't hesitate. The world they built is very interesting and the characters are more intriguing still.