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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
adventurous
informative
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I trudged through 25% of this, and just couldn't keep going. Dense, very very very slow, and characters that weren't very interesting. Guess I'll have to try again some other time.
adventurous
reflective
tense
slow-paced
adventurous
informative
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
adventurous
challenging
informative
slow-paced
I love Sci-fi books so when I saw this was a science fiction book where we follow the first 100 settlers to Mars, tasked with making the planet livable for humans, I was excited to dive in. KSR did so much research, and there's so much science, that it often gave off textbook vibes and I wanted to pluck my eyeballs out. I think that maybe this book was just not for me, and that's ok. I made it through but will not be finishing the series.
Have you ever read a sci-fi book and thought, "this could really use more staring at the desert, tea drinking, people between the ages of 40 and 90 acting like highschool students at lunch time, hand-wavy economics, and self-aggrandizing diatribes by the author to demonstrate how smart they are at every turn"? Then this is the book for you.
adventurous
informative
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I officially gave up on this one. It just took me a month to admit it.
I had to put this in the dnf pile once I got to the overly long description of the formation of Mars on pg 94. This and reading about exactly how they have to maneuver to get into orbit are just boring me. If the characters or story around this were more compelling, maybe I'd stick with it, but based on other reviews, that isn't going to happen. I really should have quit after the first equation in the text.
I don't mind some hard science, but if it doesn't further the story, it doesn't need to be there. I'd rather read a non-fiction account of physics or the planet Mars than have that within a fictional story. I have this problem with both hard sci-fi and historical fiction authors. Just because you researched it to give you a better understanding of how your fictional take on this sort of thing would work doesn't mean it needs to be put into your prose.
I don't mind some hard science, but if it doesn't further the story, it doesn't need to be there. I'd rather read a non-fiction account of physics or the planet Mars than have that within a fictional story. I have this problem with both hard sci-fi and historical fiction authors. Just because you researched it to give you a better understanding of how your fictional take on this sort of thing would work doesn't mean it needs to be put into your prose.
An exceptional series. I've read a lot of Mars books, but this may be the best. Read the whole series.