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A review by ninegladiolus
The Mars House by Natasha Pulley
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
0.25
Oof.
While tempting to leave this one star review at a single word, I feel compelled to expand it. The Mars House was my first Natasha Pulley novel and it will be my last. I picked this up because I was promised an emotional relationship with captivating political intrigue, and while this novel did indeed make a (clumsy, literal-wince-inducing) series of political statements, it came out swinging with a variety of with transphobic, xenophobic, racist, sinophobic, and anti-immigration rhetoric in its very thinly veiled allegory for very relevant political topics today.
To understand the critique that will follow, here’s as bare bones a summary as I can give. Protagonist January, once a principal star of the ballet back in London, is forced in a rapid-fire series of glossed over events to flee an Earth ravaged by climate change for the stable and ‘civilized’ colony on Mars. The only problem is that, due to growing up in Earth’s stronger gravity, January (and any other person born and raised on Earth, henceforth referred to as Earthstrong in the novel’s parlance) is super strong. Like. Smashing Martians to smithereens with a careless thought. Earthstrong are essentially outcasts in society, forbidden citizenship or rights in all but the most select cases. They also have to wear cages by law that restrict their movement to prevent injury to Martians.
Literal cages. You read right. The metaphors are about as subtle as a hand grenade.
Enter Aubrey Gale, noted politician of Mars’ ‘genderless’ (more on this later) society, who—after once chance encounter with January in the dangerous factory he and other Earthstrong are forced to work in—decides they need to marry him for political clout to show they can live in harmony with the big bad Earthstrong after all. This is part of a larger (facist) agenda to force ALL Earthstrong to go through a horribly invasive medical procedure to be ‘safe’ on Mars, a procedure which at best disables those who undergo it and at worse kills them. Somehow, this oppressor-oppressed relationship is supposed to be perceived as romantic and takes off along those lines.
Other reviewers have covered the xenophobic and racist elements more articulately and robustly than I am able to, so please go through and see other reviews for a more in-depth look at these topics.
For my review, I want to focus on the baffling gender choices made in this novel. In 2024, it’s certainly a take to flip the script on a current real world political crisis and make one’s fictional nonbinary/agender society a bunch of fascist oppressors. With things like having the Earthstrong protagonist protest their right to be called ‘he’ or ‘she’, Earthstrong being referred to as gender extremists, and repeated commentary about how ‘gendered traits’ were ‘edited out’ of Martian DNA, this reads like stunningly bad satire attacking the current trans rights movement. Who knows, maybe it is!
What I do know is that these choices display stunning insensitivity and ignorance. There’s absolutely the possibility to have interesting conversations about gender through speculative fiction, and then there’s… whatever The Mars House is doing. There wasn’t a talking mammoth to tell the protagonists that transphobia and gender essentialism is bad, but hey, at least there was one to sort of do that for racism!
Speaking of gender, there are also no women of note in this novel. Apparently this is a theme in Pulley’s novels so perhaps readers of her other work would not be as annoyed or surprised as I was, but I’m extra appalled with the double whammy of misogyny on top of the weird demonizing-gender-abolition takes.
On top of the piping hot train wreck that was any and every political statement this novel tried to make, the central protagonists did not appeal to me in any way, shape, or form. January is a complete wet blanket who capitulates to any and every demand of Gale, which again, COULD say something interesting about people experiencing oppression and how it is often systemically impossible to have any real agency in such situations, but is instead framed as a ‘from opposite sides’ political romance worth aspiring to. January also spends the entire novel fat shaming some barely-there side character who is mentioned once, which was the cherry on top of all this hot mess.
As for Gale… I am all for rooting for villains. I love morally complicated or bankrupt fictional characters as it gives us an avenue to explore challenging parts of the human experience. Unfortunately, Gale had little to no redeeming qualities; it takes more than a talking mammoth to make a redemption arc for a flagrant eugenicist. A flagrant anti-immigration, xenophobic eugenicist who we are apparently supposed to root for and romanticize? All because they almost died one time thanks to an uncaged Earthstrong so now they want to shove all of them in cages forever? No thank you. Miss me with that garbage.
To say it flatly: I don’t think The Mars House is a story the author was ready and/or qualified to tell. But again, maybe this is exactly the story Pulley wanted to tell. Who’s to say for sure? Certainly not me.
What I can say is that if you’re going to engage with the themes this novel addresses, they should be used as more than a prop for an ill-considered ‘star-crossed’ romance from across the political divide, especially if you’re drawing heavily upon themes and subject that heavily impact multiple communities your readers may be a part of. If you’re looking for politically engaging, complex, queer science fiction, you can do much, much better than The Mars House.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA for an advance review copy. All opinions are my own.
While tempting to leave this one star review at a single word, I feel compelled to expand it. The Mars House was my first Natasha Pulley novel and it will be my last. I picked this up because I was promised an emotional relationship with captivating political intrigue, and while this novel did indeed make a (clumsy, literal-wince-inducing) series of political statements, it came out swinging with a variety of with transphobic, xenophobic, racist, sinophobic, and anti-immigration rhetoric in its very thinly veiled allegory for very relevant political topics today.
To understand the critique that will follow, here’s as bare bones a summary as I can give. Protagonist January, once a principal star of the ballet back in London, is forced in a rapid-fire series of glossed over events to flee an Earth ravaged by climate change for the stable and ‘civilized’ colony on Mars. The only problem is that, due to growing up in Earth’s stronger gravity, January (and any other person born and raised on Earth, henceforth referred to as Earthstrong in the novel’s parlance) is super strong. Like. Smashing Martians to smithereens with a careless thought. Earthstrong are essentially outcasts in society, forbidden citizenship or rights in all but the most select cases. They also have to wear cages by law that restrict their movement to prevent injury to Martians.
Literal cages. You read right. The metaphors are about as subtle as a hand grenade.
Enter Aubrey Gale, noted politician of Mars’ ‘genderless’ (more on this later) society, who—after once chance encounter with January in the dangerous factory he and other Earthstrong are forced to work in—decides they need to marry him for political clout to show they can live in harmony with the big bad Earthstrong after all. This is part of a larger (facist) agenda to force ALL Earthstrong to go through a horribly invasive medical procedure to be ‘safe’ on Mars, a procedure which at best disables those who undergo it and at worse kills them. Somehow, this oppressor-oppressed relationship is supposed to be perceived as romantic and takes off along those lines.
Other reviewers have covered the xenophobic and racist elements more articulately and robustly than I am able to, so please go through and see other reviews for a more in-depth look at these topics.
For my review, I want to focus on the baffling gender choices made in this novel. In 2024, it’s certainly a take to flip the script on a current real world political crisis and make one’s fictional nonbinary/agender society a bunch of fascist oppressors. With things like having the Earthstrong protagonist protest their right to be called ‘he’ or ‘she’, Earthstrong being referred to as gender extremists, and repeated commentary about how ‘gendered traits’ were ‘edited out’ of Martian DNA, this reads like stunningly bad satire attacking the current trans rights movement. Who knows, maybe it is!
What I do know is that these choices display stunning insensitivity and ignorance. There’s absolutely the possibility to have interesting conversations about gender through speculative fiction, and then there’s… whatever The Mars House is doing. There wasn’t a talking mammoth to tell the protagonists that transphobia and gender essentialism is bad, but hey, at least there was one to sort of do that for racism!
Speaking of gender, there are also no women of note in this novel. Apparently this is a theme in Pulley’s novels so perhaps readers of her other work would not be as annoyed or surprised as I was, but I’m extra appalled with the double whammy of misogyny on top of the weird demonizing-gender-abolition takes.
On top of the piping hot train wreck that was any and every political statement this novel tried to make, the central protagonists did not appeal to me in any way, shape, or form. January is a complete wet blanket who capitulates to any and every demand of Gale, which again, COULD say something interesting about people experiencing oppression and how it is often systemically impossible to have any real agency in such situations, but is instead framed as a ‘from opposite sides’ political romance worth aspiring to. January also spends the entire novel fat shaming some barely-there side character who is mentioned once, which was the cherry on top of all this hot mess.
As for Gale… I am all for rooting for villains. I love morally complicated or bankrupt fictional characters as it gives us an avenue to explore challenging parts of the human experience. Unfortunately, Gale had little to no redeeming qualities; it takes more than a talking mammoth to make a redemption arc for a flagrant eugenicist. A flagrant anti-immigration, xenophobic eugenicist who we are apparently supposed to root for and romanticize? All because they almost died one time thanks to an uncaged Earthstrong so now they want to shove all of them in cages forever? No thank you. Miss me with that garbage.
To say it flatly: I don’t think The Mars House is a story the author was ready and/or qualified to tell. But again, maybe this is exactly the story Pulley wanted to tell. Who’s to say for sure? Certainly not me.
What I can say is that if you’re going to engage with the themes this novel addresses, they should be used as more than a prop for an ill-considered ‘star-crossed’ romance from across the political divide, especially if you’re drawing heavily upon themes and subject that heavily impact multiple communities your readers may be a part of. If you’re looking for politically engaging, complex, queer science fiction, you can do much, much better than The Mars House.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA for an advance review copy. All opinions are my own.