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3.55 AVERAGE
3.55 AVERAGE
This book combined my love for a) steampunk, b) sea stories (although in this case the sea is space) and c) Regency Historical Fiction. Reading it made me one very happy nerd. My only complaint was that the writing was rather repetitive in places. Does everything have to be described as "paradoxically"? Anyway, need book 2 now.
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Arabella of Mars is fantastic. I really enjoyed this example of the 'woman dresses as a man to become a member of a ship's crew' trope. This was a pretty common occurrence during this period in history, so I like to see it well done.
The book is at its strongest during the England and Ship sections, which is a pity because the Mars represented sounds really interesting. It's just unfortunate how much English colonialism is a feature, rather than a theme, of the story.
Unfortunately the ending really isn't clear or earned enough to get that 5th star either.
Still, I liked Arabella, the ship, Captain Singh, the crew and the romance. It's not the focus of the story but it is present and well written.
The steampunk atmosphere and theming is beautiful. I really enjoyed it. I also enjoyed the alternative reality that space has oxygen and winds. I loved the idea of this. Can't wait to see the swamps of Venus!!
The book is at its strongest during the England and Ship sections, which is a pity because the Mars represented sounds really interesting. It's just unfortunate how much English colonialism is a feature, rather than a theme, of the story.
Unfortunately the ending really isn't clear or earned enough to get that 5th star either.
Still, I liked Arabella, the ship, Captain Singh, the crew and the romance. It's not the focus of the story but it is present and well written.
The steampunk atmosphere and theming is beautiful. I really enjoyed it. I also enjoyed the alternative reality that space has oxygen and winds. I loved the idea of this. Can't wait to see the swamps of Venus!!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism, Sexism
Minor: Xenophobia
There is censored swearing, which was really odd to me. You don't need to add the swearing to the dialogue and then censor it... just say 'he swore'
Publishers should really stop releasing book covers/synopses so far in advance. Because I heard about this book last summer, realized that "Regency girl who grows up on Mars and travels between planets in a flying sailing ship" was everything that my Jane Austen and Treasure Planet loving heart had ever desired, and then I had to wait AN ENTIRE YEAR to read it. It was hard, guys.
It would have been impossible for this book to live up entirely to my expectations. There was less adventure and much more explanation of the ship's operation than I was expecting, and I actually liked the Mars portions of the plot better than the sailing portions. There's some fun world-building, and it's a fun little adventure book. It's not mind-blowingly awesome, but that's ok, because it's nice to have a smaller-scale story.
Also, the proposal scene was surprisingly adorable.
It would have been impossible for this book to live up entirely to my expectations. There was less adventure and much more explanation of the ship's operation than I was expecting, and I actually liked the Mars portions of the plot better than the sailing portions. There's some fun world-building, and it's a fun little adventure book. It's not mind-blowingly awesome, but that's ok, because it's nice to have a smaller-scale story.
Also, the proposal scene was surprisingly adorable.
Ok.... I have a lot of feelings about this book, and in the end it's mainly feeling unsatisfied. Also, I'm tired so this might be crankier than I want.
The first half of this book was really really good. I loved Arabella's experience in becoming a captains boy, I loved the secret identity, I loved the crushing on the captain, I loved just the amazing ship in space riding space currents to Mars! I love Aadim, (though his name is eerily too lose to another artificial intelligence I've read recently) and how he may or may not be sentient. I loved the descriptions of Mars and alien life, and the whole steampunk thing. (Speaking of, I could really get behind some steampunk stuff, I will have to read more of the genre!)
But then. Oh, the then.
Once her gender is revealed the ENTIRE BOOK goes downhill. Arabella lost so much of her growth and charm and became a pretty frilly thing to be protected at all costs. I hated it so so much. She was no longer allowed to speak to the soldiers who were her friends, the officers she ate with would no longer discuss matters to unseemly for her feminine ears. She was allowed to stay on as ships navigator, but frankly there was no one else so it didn't feel like a victory.
Even once they got to Mars I was continually frustrated! Most of the people she met gave her the "you can't you're a girl" treatment. Honestly, that's the core of the problem. I am just over reading books with that mentality. I get that this is a Regency era book, and sure that was the real way things were. BUT. Once you have a fancy HOT AIR BALLOON riding the SPACE CURRENTS TO MARS, you are allowed to change things. You just are!
I was just so frustrated and disappointed that I couldn't even appreciate Arabella's victory over her slimy cousin. Even the ending proposal was unsatisfying, both because it ended too abruptly, and because it felt forced from her brothers ultimatum (though I can understand it, on the heels of the previous frustrations it was just one more thing to add to the pile).
Sooooo yeah. I'm so let down, in part because I wanted to love this book so much, and because the first half was so good, that I never recovered from my disappointment of the third quarter.
The first half of this book was really really good. I loved Arabella's experience in becoming a captains boy, I loved the secret identity, I loved the crushing on the captain, I loved just the amazing ship in space riding space currents to Mars! I love Aadim, (though his name is eerily too lose to another artificial intelligence I've read recently) and how he may or may not be sentient. I loved the descriptions of Mars and alien life, and the whole steampunk thing. (Speaking of, I could really get behind some steampunk stuff, I will have to read more of the genre!)
But then. Oh, the then.
Once her gender is revealed the ENTIRE BOOK goes downhill. Arabella lost so much of her growth and charm and became a pretty frilly thing to be protected at all costs. I hated it so so much. She was no longer allowed to speak to the soldiers who were her friends, the officers she ate with would no longer discuss matters to unseemly for her feminine ears. She was allowed to stay on as ships navigator, but frankly there was no one else so it didn't feel like a victory.
Even once they got to Mars I was continually frustrated! Most of the people she met gave her the "you can't you're a girl" treatment. Honestly, that's the core of the problem. I am just over reading books with that mentality. I get that this is a Regency era book, and sure that was the real way things were. BUT. Once you have a fancy HOT AIR BALLOON riding the SPACE CURRENTS TO MARS, you are allowed to change things. You just are!
I was just so frustrated and disappointed that I couldn't even appreciate Arabella's victory over her slimy cousin. Even the ending proposal was unsatisfying, both because it ended too abruptly, and because it felt forced from her brothers ultimatum (though I can understand it, on the heels of the previous frustrations it was just one more thing to add to the pile).
Sooooo yeah. I'm so let down, in part because I wanted to love this book so much, and because the first half was so good, that I never recovered from my disappointment of the third quarter.
This was an interesting one because it's such an exercise in suspension of disbelief. It imagines outer space as something truly different from what we now know space to be. This is one girl's journey through space-as-would-be-imagined-by-a-contemporary-of-Jules-Verne, with heavy shades of Jane Austen. The space between planets is traversed by flying ships. This first book in a planned trilogy introduces the reader to Arabella Ashby, regency lady raised on a Martian homestead and removed to Earth in the face of her mother's fears that Arabella is growing up far too wild and unladylike for polite society. After her father's unexpected death, a homesick Arabella finds herself marooned on Earth, betrayed by a cousin who is after the family fortune- with Arabella's brother (still on Mars) the only barrier. So naturally Arabella dresses up as a boy, signs up as cabin boy on the quickest Mars-bound ship she can, and sets of to beat the treacherous cousin there.
I had a fun reading this one, it was a pretty novel concept for me. So I really enjoyed the visuals of the story (flying ships! That moved between planets! Regency aesthetics!), and I quite liked the character of Arabella. There were bits that felt really period-accurate (despite the space-travel). The gender politics, weird thing where any person from India an English person met outside India was secretly royalty (seriously this just seems to be a thing with a certain sort of novel written in the 19th-20th century), and the blithe approach the English took to colonising another planet that already HAD inhabitants- which we know they took to just showing up in other countries and acting like they owned the place in our less inter-planetary world (although they seem to have treated the martians slightly better on the whole than the English treated people Indigenous to the countries they colonized here on Earth... which is a sad statement given how the English treat the Martians in this book... I'm digressing. Colonial politics is not for a mini-review, Kelly). Anyway. It felt like it was something that could have been written at the time, albeit with some decidedly more modern quirks in writing style and characterisation. I'm hoping to get my hands on the sequel soon (the library where I work has it so... soon... hopefully).
I had a fun reading this one, it was a pretty novel concept for me. So I really enjoyed the visuals of the story (flying ships! That moved between planets! Regency aesthetics!), and I quite liked the character of Arabella. There were bits that felt really period-accurate (despite the space-travel). The gender politics, weird thing where any person from India an English person met outside India was secretly royalty (seriously this just seems to be a thing with a certain sort of novel written in the 19th-20th century), and the blithe approach the English took to colonising another planet that already HAD inhabitants- which we know they took to just showing up in other countries and acting like they owned the place in our less inter-planetary world (although they seem to have treated the martians slightly better on the whole than the English treated people Indigenous to the countries they colonized here on Earth... which is a sad statement given how the English treat the Martians in this book... I'm digressing. Colonial politics is not for a mini-review, Kelly). Anyway. It felt like it was something that could have been written at the time, albeit with some decidedly more modern quirks in writing style and characterisation. I'm hoping to get my hands on the sequel soon (the library where I work has it so... soon... hopefully).
Imagine that Jane Austen, Patrick O'Brian (author of the Aubrey-Maturin novels), and Edgar Rice Burroughs met at a party, got lit on some really fine opium, and had a wild threesome. The love-child of this mini-orgy would be this novel, a smashing blend of Regency romance, Age of Sail, and planetary romance a la ERB's Mars books.
In order to stave off a threat to her beloved older brother's life, Arabella Ashby, a young Englishwoman born and raised on a colonized Mars, must return to Mars from Earth as swiftly as possible. In this universe where the planets whirl in an interstellar atmosphere that can be traversed by airborne sailing ships, her best bet is a merchant ship belonging to the Honorable Mars Company. This book has everything: Crossdressing, naval battles in space, delightfully alien Martians, and thorny problems with inheritance law, along with an intelligent, resourceful heroine and an understated romance. I can't wait to read the sequel and subsequent adventures of Miss Ashby.
In order to stave off a threat to her beloved older brother's life, Arabella Ashby, a young Englishwoman born and raised on a colonized Mars, must return to Mars from Earth as swiftly as possible. In this universe where the planets whirl in an interstellar atmosphere that can be traversed by airborne sailing ships, her best bet is a merchant ship belonging to the Honorable Mars Company. This book has everything: Crossdressing, naval battles in space, delightfully alien Martians, and thorny problems with inheritance law, along with an intelligent, resourceful heroine and an understated romance. I can't wait to read the sequel and subsequent adventures of Miss Ashby.
This was such a fun historical steampunk novel! Arabella of Mars is a book about Arabella, an English lady living on Mars, but has to go back to England because her mother wants her to remember her manners and marry well (as they did in the 19th century). Then she realises she has to get back to Mars before her cousin kills her brother for the land and disguises herself as a boy and joins an airship.
I loved the part on the airship, through the trials Arabella has to go through, not only disguised as a boy but alsothrough a mutiny and pirates and being discovered as a girl . Then they get to Mars where everything got even worse for Arabella. Everything was very fast-paced, I loved the romance, which was very slow burn, and I loved how it was not the focus of the book as well.
One thing I will say is, don't expect any explanation or world-building. It's rather like the film Treasure Planet - people can breathe in space, space travel has been around for centuries, Mars has a breathable atmosphere. Don't try and work out the science of it at all. I'm actually a little glad there was no attempt at an explanation because I feel like trying to explain that wouldn't have made any sense.
I'm looking forward to the sequel to this book when it comes out this year! Four stars!
I loved the part on the airship, through the trials Arabella has to go through, not only disguised as a boy but also
One thing I will say is, don't expect any explanation or world-building. It's rather like the film Treasure Planet - people can breathe in space, space travel has been around for centuries, Mars has a breathable atmosphere. Don't try and work out the science of it at all. I'm actually a little glad there was no attempt at an explanation because I feel like trying to explain that wouldn't have made any sense.
I'm looking forward to the sequel to this book when it comes out this year! Four stars!
adventurous
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A Victorian-era Treasure Planet-esque adventure that I didn’t know I needed!
Arabella Ashby, born and raised on Mars, is forced to return to Earth when her mother deems her “too wild,” leaving her beloved father and older brother behind with their family plantation. But after news reaches her of her father’s passing and she discovers a plot that threatens her brother’s life, Arabella disguises herself as a boy, earns a place on a Mars-bound airship, and sets off on an interplanetary adventure complete with pirates, mutiny, and automata galore!
A large portion of the story is focused on the daily life and work aboard the ship, which is actually pretty cool because you can imagine it’s similar to how a real ship (on the ocean) would function, but with sci-fi twists like zero-gravity and automaton navigators and forested asteroids. I also loved this protagonist! Arabella is smart, resourceful, reckless at times, bold and brave. She’s aware of her own strengths and limitations and she grows in confidence in her abilities throughout the story.
must say i liked the first half (or thereabouts) of the book but then after the 4th, 5th, 6th,.... catastrophe happening to the group with arabella saving everyone the whole thing became kind of ridiculous and boring. In addition, though Arabella character started strong and at the beginning of the book it seemed that this character would grow and you get to know her, but she remained this one dimensional being, the others were also there for props and the love interest? as one dimensional as anything else