Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.49 AVERAGE
3.49 AVERAGE
slow-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
So.... first off thank you bookishfirst for an ARC copy of this book.
I was so excited about this book! When reading the first look and synopsis I was expecting a hunger games-esk/Red Rising type book.
These Martian kids forced to move back home to Mars after living on earth for years?
But no this book was about politics heavy politics - utopia vs consumerism and the struggles and challenges the main characters faced.
I had to put down the book and picked up the audio ARC from scribd (thank you!) to finish this huge book.
I am always here for a space book with fighting against the man - and I guess this book had that it was way to real politics and not entertaining omg did that just happen type fight against the ‘man’
I didn’t hate this book, it was beautifully written It just wasn’t what the first chapters I got a view of seemed to promise.
I was so excited about this book! When reading the first look and synopsis I was expecting a hunger games-esk/Red Rising type book.
These Martian kids forced to move back home to Mars after living on earth for years?
But no this book was about politics heavy politics - utopia vs consumerism and the struggles and challenges the main characters faced.
I had to put down the book and picked up the audio ARC from scribd (thank you!) to finish this huge book.
I am always here for a space book with fighting against the man - and I guess this book had that it was way to real politics and not entertaining omg did that just happen type fight against the ‘man’
I didn’t hate this book, it was beautifully written It just wasn’t what the first chapters I got a view of seemed to promise.
Real THE PUBLISHER APPROVED A DRC OF THE BOOK FOR ME VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: It will come as no surprise to any regular reader, or in fact anyone I've interacted with in the past decade-plus, that end-stage capitalism such as has gifted us with the badly botched, lethally disorganized COVID-19 plague response is not high on my list of Good Things in the old-fashioned Martha Stewart sense. Quite a lot of people (over fifteen) in the assisted-living facility where I live are dead thanks to this money-grubbing ethos. So yes, I began this read fully expecting to approve of the Utopian Martian colony and its collectivist politics.
Well, it's comforting (I suppose) that I consistently never learn....
Hugo-winner Hao (Best Novelette, 2016) builds two competing Utopias. Neither sees the beam in its own eye but focuses on the mote in its symbiotic sibling's; so much easier to sell the distortion and misperception necessary to see any human-made system as anything other than dystopian. Earth's hypercapitalism has continued to devour the planet; its existence is always precarious, always threatening to collapse. Mars's collectivism is dependent on inputs from the fragile, worn-out Earth; its people are not natural innovators, never striving to Do More because, well, why? You don't get more, and there is limited support for striving.
A side note to shout out my dead father, whose aperçu about economics I quote frequently: No system will thrive that either ignores or exalts greed.
Read the rest of my review here.
My Review: It will come as no surprise to any regular reader, or in fact anyone I've interacted with in the past decade-plus, that end-stage capitalism such as has gifted us with the badly botched, lethally disorganized COVID-19 plague response is not high on my list of Good Things in the old-fashioned Martha Stewart sense. Quite a lot of people (over fifteen) in the assisted-living facility where I live are dead thanks to this money-grubbing ethos. So yes, I began this read fully expecting to approve of the Utopian Martian colony and its collectivist politics.
Well, it's comforting (I suppose) that I consistently never learn....
Hugo-winner Hao (Best Novelette, 2016) builds two competing Utopias. Neither sees the beam in its own eye but focuses on the mote in its symbiotic sibling's; so much easier to sell the distortion and misperception necessary to see any human-made system as anything other than dystopian. Earth's hypercapitalism has continued to devour the planet; its existence is always precarious, always threatening to collapse. Mars's collectivism is dependent on inputs from the fragile, worn-out Earth; its people are not natural innovators, never striving to Do More because, well, why? You don't get more, and there is limited support for striving.
A side note to shout out my dead father, whose aperçu about economics I quote frequently: No system will thrive that either ignores or exalts greed.
Read the rest of my review here.
This was good, just not as good as I had hoped. If you like LeGuin's books, this might be for you. It is not action oriented, but deals with philosophical questions such as freedom. Sometimes translated books aren't as good in another language, and I suspect that's what partly happened here. The author shows talent, and I'll be on the look out for more. 3.5 stars
Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!
Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was a much more enjoyable read than I was expecting.
We mostly follow Luo, who is a young girl and has recently come back to Mars after living for a few years on Earth. She has a lot of trouble to get back to the way society runs on Mars and starts to question then challenge it.
She has a few friends, including the other kids who went to Earth, who want to start some kind of a revolution.
The society on Mars feels very like communism ; people are given an apartment, all apartments are the same but the ones for families are bigger than the ones for single people, you have to choose what your field is and you cannot change it, the more your field brings to the society, the more funding it gets, etc. It feels idyllic at first, to me at least, but from an outsider's perspective, it seems limiting, and that's what Luo is discovering. There's also another character that we follow at first who is from Earth and is a film maker. He has a very interesting point of view on this society and gives an insight into Earth.
Earth in 2196 has become even more capitalist than it is today ; the whole point of life is to make money but some people are against that and Luo meets some of them while she's there. There's also been a war between Earth and Mars that shook both of them and they're now trying to mend things, hence people from Earth coming to Mars for the first time in ages. Earth wants to take the technology developed on Mars and capitalize on it on their planet, as you can imagine.
As Luo and her friends start their rebellion, a lot of political machinations are happening surrounding the talks with Earth.
This was a novel full of ideas and I loved that, but I'm not sure who to recommend this to. I also thought it interesting that this comes from a Chinese author, as I would say China also struggles with combining ideas of communism and capitalism.
Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
We mostly follow Luo, who is a young girl and has recently come back to Mars after living for a few years on Earth. She has a lot of trouble to get back to the way society runs on Mars and starts to question then challenge it.
She has a few friends, including the other kids who went to Earth, who want to start some kind of a revolution.
The society on Mars feels very like communism ; people are given an apartment, all apartments are the same but the ones for families are bigger than the ones for single people, you have to choose what your field is and you cannot change it, the more your field brings to the society, the more funding it gets, etc. It feels idyllic at first, to me at least, but from an outsider's perspective, it seems limiting, and that's what Luo is discovering. There's also another character that we follow at first who is from Earth and is a film maker. He has a very interesting point of view on this society and gives an insight into Earth.
Earth in 2196 has become even more capitalist than it is today ; the whole point of life is to make money but some people are against that and Luo meets some of them while she's there. There's also been a war between Earth and Mars that shook both of them and they're now trying to mend things, hence people from Earth coming to Mars for the first time in ages. Earth wants to take the technology developed on Mars and capitalize on it on their planet, as you can imagine.
As Luo and her friends start their rebellion, a lot of political machinations are happening surrounding the talks with Earth.
This was a novel full of ideas and I loved that, but I'm not sure who to recommend this to. I also thought it interesting that this comes from a Chinese author, as I would say China also struggles with combining ideas of communism and capitalism.
Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher with providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an impartial review. What is freedom? For the Terran people it is the right to earn money from their ideas and inventions. On Mars, it is the ability to pursue those things without having to worry about earning a living. For a group of young people from Mars who have spent their adolescence in internships on Earth, the question is important enough for them to consider revolution. The book follows these young adults, who have returned to Mars and are embarking on their new lives and careers while contemplating the things they learned from a planet whose ideals are so different from their home planet’s. This book is pretty deep. It’s not a quick or lighthearted read, but it is thoroughly enjoyable.
Thoughtful and meaty literary sci fi, beautifully translated by Ken Liu. I was left in awe of how the minds of writer and translator worked together to create such a poignant and beautiful novel.
There are definitely interesting ideas and scenes, but overall it wasn't for me. Mainly, I was disappointed with the protagonist's arc, but there were a lot of secondary things that just didn't work for me (non-spoiler example: scrupulous heteronormativity). I'm sure part of it is I don't have the cultural frame of reference, which is part of why I read the book to begin with - so maybe it's unfair to complain that a book explores ideas from the perspective of a very different value system and arrives at different very different conclusions than I would. But I really did feel that some of those conclusions weren't justified by the story or characters.