Review: Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Published : Bantam Spectra (1996), HarperCollins/Voyager(1996)

Series : Book 3 of the Mars Trilogy

Awards Won : Hugo and Locus SF Awards

Awards Nominated : Clarke, Campbell,  and BSFA Awards

The Book :

”The red planet is red no longer, as Mars has become a perfectly inhabitable world. But while Mars flourishes, Earth is threatened by overpopulation and ecological disaster. Soon people look to Mars as a refuge, initiating a possible interplanetary conflict, as well as political strife between the Reds, who wish to preserve the planet in its desert state, and the Green "terraformers". The ultimate fate of Earth, as well as the possibility of new explorations into the solar system, stand in the balance.” ~WWEnd.com

This is the third and final book of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy, so there will be spoilers of the series ahead!

That is a fairly vague introduction for such a massive book, but I think that most people who have read Red Mars and Green Mars know the kind of book they’re getting into with Blue Mars.  I do have to say that I would strongly recommend against reading this novel without having read the first two books in the series.  Altogether, I expect this trilogy to remain a classic in stories of Mars for a long time to come.

My Thoughts:

I’ve spaced my reading of the Mars Trilogy over the past three years, so now I can look back on the earlier events of the series with a feeling of nostalgia.  This series started with the journey to and colonization of Mars, and then moved on to terraforming, creating a new society, and navigating the social, economic, and political ties to Earth.  These characters have been through several revolutions, and have lived through many human-driven—but still chaotic—changes of geology, atmosphere, environment, government and culture that have fundamentally changed the face of Mars and its people.  Blue Mars is a fitting conclusion to this story.

Though many of the First Hundred have died at this point, many familiar characters are still alive as part of the “superelderly” (living 200+ years as a result of gerontological treatments) generation.  The story focuses even more than Green Mars on the psychological effects of such a long life. While I felt like the longevity treatment was not especially well integrated in Red Mars, it seems much more incorporated here.  This may be in part because it has grown to play such a large role in both the story and structure of these future societies. Seeing the major characters from Red Mars reaching the (possible) end of their massive life span, and watching them reflect on all that came before gave the story a feeling of natural completeness.

After so many pages, I have come to appreciate the personalities of most of the viewpoint characters. I enjoyed seeing more of Nadia, even though she was not especially central to the novel this time.  Nirgal, as well, feels much less like a wonderkid, and much more like a well-rounded character.  His successes here feel balanced by his failures, and I especially enjoyed reading about his slow process of building his ex-revolutionary life.  Another young native Martian is added to cast, showing more of the new wave of culture.  Her sections were markedly different from any of the other characters, which was refreshing.  I think her chapters were just short enough to keep me from becoming bored with her one-track hedonistic mind.   

Back to the old guard, I was especially happy to see more of Maya and Michel, the unstable pair (or choleric and melancholic pair, Michel might say).  Michel is still dealing with his homesickness for a place that no longer exists, while Maya’s mental problems steadily worsen as her mind is pushed beyond its natural lifetime. Through Maya we see the difficulty of continually trying to renew yourself, and to keep up with the events of a world that is always threatening to leave you behind. Lastly, Ann and Sax seemed to be a central focus of this last novel. They represent the two sides of the old debate, Red vs. Green, though the whole debate is becoming obsolete in the terraformed society of Mars.  Ann must deal with her grief for Mars, and see if she can find a way to adapt to the present. Sax is eager to help, but knows no way to adequately communicate to her the wonder and beauty that he sees in this new man-altered Mars.

Blue Mars seemed to be a quieter book than the first two, with more description and contemplation than tension. It also widened the lens to show colonization elsewhere in the solar system, as well as the “hyper-Malthusian” situation on Earth. All of this served to paint a satisfying picture of where humanity was, how far it had come, and what hopes remained for the future.  While this did round out the series in a satisfying way, the novel did not have as much of a focus or narrative drive as either of the first two novels. Despite this, Blue Mars works quite wonderfully to give a sense of resolution to the personal journeys of many characters, as well as to the fate of humanity and their many worlds.

My Rating: 4.5/5

Blue Mars is a successful conclusion for the impressive work of imagination and research that is the Mars Trilogy.  Though some artistic liberties were taken with science, Robinson has brought Mars to life in a way that feels plausible, and seems to have the complexity of reality.  Slowly, interspersed with many tours of painstakingly described Martin landscape, the handful of First Hundred who head the story have grown into characters that will linger in my mind indefinitely. The story of Blue Mars is both quieter and less focused than in the first two novels, but it still gives a satisfying and hopeful conclusion for the lives of these fascinating characters and the world they inhabit.

P.S.  For an overall series rating, I would give Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy a 5/5.  

Review: Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle

Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle

Published: Eos(2000), Gollancz(2000)

Awards Won: BSFA Award

Awards Nominated: Campbell, Clarke, and Locus Fantasy

The Book:

“If history could be changed, how would we know? 

Historian Pierce Ratcliff has plans to publish a new translation of historical documents detailing the life of a 15^th century female mercenary commander, known as Ash.  What starts out as a simple contemporary translation becomes increasingly strange, as unexplainable discrepancies from established history come to light within his supposedly genuine latin manuscripts. Is this a case of simple scholarly error, or is something far more extraordinary happening?

Within his translation, Ash is a woman of legend in continental Europe—a kind of mercenary Jeanne d’Arc, who is credited with hearing voices that help lead her to victory. She and her company, the Lion Azure, are inexorably drawn into the machinations of a (mysteriously undocumented) Visigothic civilization in northern Africa, which seems inexplicably driven to wipe the wealthy duchy of Burgundy completely off the face of the Earth.” ~Allie

This is the first book I’ve ever read by Mary Gentle, and my fourth entry in WWEnd’s Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge.  To help no one else to fall into the same trap I did, I want to explain some publication details. Ash: A Secret History was published as a single book in the UK, and it has a sequel called Ilario.  However, in the US, Ash: A Secret History is published as a series of four books.  The first US book, which corresponds to roughly the first quarter of the novel, is titled A Secret History: Book 1 of Ash. This last is the book I initially bought secondhand in a US bookstore, believing that “Book 1” was a reference to the existence of Ilario.  As I approached the end the book, it became abundantly clear that it was a piece of a larger novel. I ordered the full book, and so this review is of the entirety of Ash: A Secret History. 

My Thoughts:

I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I started reading Ash: A Secret History, and I kept that feeling through most of the book.  I absolutely adore fiction that defies my expectations, and my inability to tell where the story was going kept me glued to the book.  I’ve been reading Ash since January, but that isn’t evidence of any reluctance to read on my part—it’s just that long of a book.  From the beginning, I had a really hard time telling what kind of a story it would be; Ash’s backstory made me think of standard medieval European fantasy, and then a plot twist made me suspect it would be a romance (it isn’t, really).  I think the official genre is science fantasy, and I would agree with that classification.  Despite its setting, I think it is much closer to science fiction than fantasy, as everything that could be considered ‘magic’ does have a scientific-style explanation. I’m going to try very hard not to spoil any of the many twists or revelations that made experiencing this novel so enjoyable. 

The world of Ash, for the most part, seemed like a surprisingly realistic take on medieval life.  I’ve read that Gentle earned a War Studies MA during the writing of the novel, and it shows in the detail with which the life of Ash’s mercenary company is portrayed.  Ash’s world is one where armor needs to be constantly cleaned of rust, and battles involve a lot of confusion and death (and no epic single combats between heroes).  The violence is not sugar-coated, and neither are the psychological effects of making your living out of brutally killing people for money.  I am no historian, but the accounts of battles, mercenary politics, and daily life seemed much more believable than I am accustomed to in fantasy.  I think this meticulous description of the mundane made it a bit more difficult to swallow the more outlandish fictional elements (such as certain combinations of quantum physics concepts and religion), but the story was definitely worth choosing to suspend my disbelief.

The framing story, while interesting in its own right, also serves several very important purposes with respect to the alternate historical account.  Since Ash’s story is presented as a translation, ‘Dr. Ratcliff’ was free to write it in modern English, so that it would be more accessible to his readers.  I think this was probably the best possible decision for language, since attempting to write in the languages of the time period would be either stilted and pseudo-medieval or just nearly impossible to read.  The framing also gave a perfect in for Ratcliff to write in footnotes to explain archaic words, historical references, and at which points the story diverges from actual history.  The character of Ash is naturally fictional, but a lot of the events and some characters are actually historical, and I would have little chance of telling them apart without the help of Dr. Ratcliff.  Even my fiancé, who has lived in France for most of his life, was a pretty hazy on the details of 15^th century Burgundian dukes, so I think the explanations would be useful for most readers.  As a result, I feel like I’ve actually learned a bit about late medieval period history through reading this novel.

The characters take shape slowly throughout the story.  Pierce and his editor we get to know only through their email correspondence, but their personalities came through quite clearly in the informal writing.  Many of the people in Ash’s company were little more than names (there are hundreds in her company, after all), but the people closest to her are gradually fleshed out.  Some of the most important characters are women: Ash, the Carthaginian general, and a close female friend of Ash who is living as a man. I appreciated that Ash and other prominent female characters did not feel like 21^st century women dropped into history, but more like products of their time.  For instance, Ash doesn’t have an enlightened understanding of gender, she just thinks of herself more as a soldier than as a woman.  She’s mostly interested in her gender in terms of the complications it throws into maintaining her authority over her company.  As usual for my reviews, I especially enjoyed Ash and her companions because they were flawed and fallible, and capable of failing in truly devastating ways.  At the same time, Ash was an exceptionally intelligent and driven young woman, which made her story a particularly compelling one.

My Rating: 5/5

Ash: A Secret History was a surprise to me, and a very good one! As an alternate history story set in 15^th century continental Europe, It exists on the crossroads between science fiction and fantasy (though further on the science fiction side from my perspective). Gentle seems very knowledgeable about 15^th century war, history and life, through the details she includes of the life of Ash’s mercenary company. The framing story, which involves the historian translating the “Ash” manuscripts, allows an easy way to include explanatory notes when necessary, without bogging down the story.  Many characters, including the three primary female characters, had their own character arcs, and I loved how they were slowly built up through the course of the story.  Finally, this was a tale with many unexpected twists and turns, and I loved that I could rarely tell exactly where it was going next.  I thoroughly enjoyed Ash: A Secret History, and I’m happy that I was prompted to read it by the WoGF reading challenge!

Review: A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett

A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett

Published: 2004, Doubleday

Series: Discworld, Book 2 of the Tiffany Aching series

Awards Won: Locus YA award

The Book:

“Something is coming after Tiffany ...

Tiffany Aching is ready to begin her apprenticeship in magic. She expects spells and magic -- not chores and ill-tempered nanny goats! Surely there must be more to witchcraft than this!

What Tiffany doesn't know is that an insidious, disembodied creature is pursuing her. This time, neither Mistress Weatherwax (the greatest witch in the world) nor the fierce, six-inch-high Wee Free Men can protect her. In the end, it will take all of Tiffany's inner strength to save herself ... if it can be done at all.” ~WWEnd.com

This is the second of Pratchett’s YA series featuring Tiffany Aching, which has been the subject of a read-along hosted by Little RedReviewer and Dab of Darkness. I’m also counting this as my first fantasy novel for Stainless Steel Dropping’s Once Upon a Time VII.  While this novel clearly follows from The Wee Free Men, I think it could also stand alone fairly well as an independent novel.

My Thoughts:

A Hat Full of Sky picks up a few years after the events of The Wee Free Men, as Tifffany prepares to leave her home on the Chalk to take up an apprenticeship with a witch named Miss Level.  The novel makes a point to re-introduce the relevant events and characters from the previous book, so the sequel is still accessible to new readers.  Having just read the first book, I was at times impatient about the recapping, though I did appreciate that the events of the previous novel continued to affect the characters.  Tiffany is still an excellent heroine, though she appears to be growing out of the confidence of childhood and into the uncertainty of adolescence.

Tiffany is now eleven, and in a mundane sense, she encounters problems that are likely to be especially relevant to readers of her age.  For instance, Tiffany and others in the novel struggle with homesickness, loneliness, and being mocked by their peers. Tiffany had to cope with her new surroundings, as well as the presence of other young witches, and another part of the book focused on the difficiulties the new kelda of the Chalk’s clan of Wee Free Men has adjusting to her position.  Though the details are fantasy, I think some of the basic difficulties both Tiffany and the new kelda face would be easily recognizable for any kid who ends up having to move to a new home.

Another important theme of the book is the difference between what things (and people) appear to be as opposed to what they are.  A giant horse carving in the Chalk serves as a metaphor for this.  Though it doesn’t look much like a proper horse, it represents the essence of the actions that make a horse—or as Tiffany’s Granny Aching put it, “T’aint what a horse looks like. It’s what a horse be.” This distinction between appearance and works plays out in various situations in the witch community, and Tiffany finds that public image often has very little to do with a person’s worth. 

With all of this, the story is still humorous, fast-paced, and easy to read.  The Wee Free Men appear again, along with all their usual kinds of ridiculous hijinks, in addition to a number of new characters. While I felt like there was more use of magic in this novel than the first, the job of being a witch is clearly not defined solely by magic.  In her apprenticeship to Miss Level, Tiffany mostly learns about implicit rules of community and ideas of social responsibility. While magic is important to the final conflict of the story, its importance is secondary to the practitioners’ wisdom and strength of will.

My Rating: 4/5

A Hat Full of Sky is an entertaining sequel to The Wee Free Men, featuring Tiffany Aching as an 11-year-old apprentice witch.  It’s another exciting, humorous story targeted towards a younger audience, which also addresses some issues relevant to the age group.  There’s a lot of consideration of interpersonal relationships, and of the difference image and actions.  Tiffany is still a great heroine to read about, and I’m enjoying watching as she slowly grows up through these novels.