A review by manuphoto
Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

emotional hopeful sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Blue Mars provides an excellent conclusion to an epic of over 2200 pages and a story that last over two centuries and spans over the entire solar system.

Kim Stanley Robinson delivers an outstanding tale and a superb conclusion. The characters got more and more attention as the story went, and with Blue Mars, they grew even more. This book is different from the two previous ones. It focusses a lot more on the characters with Mars being used as a background more than anything else. In the previous books, Mars was evolving and taking part of the story. It still does in this book, but we are seeing it through the lives of the characters on the surface more than through scientific analysis. In Blue, we get to live on Mars, not only explore it.

We also get more of Earth in this book, as well as some other planets in our solar system. In Red Mars, it was almost claustrophobic, with people living in tents on the red planet, but here, they are part of the human experiment in space. The remarkable build up of the two previous books, both on the human side, and on the terraforming side, pays off in Blue Mars.

As for the previous books, it could feel tedious if you don’t appreciate the characters and the pacing . And it is completely understandable. But I, for one, really appreciated it. It’s well characterized, the science is sound, the (little) action swift and funny, and it’s grandiose in scale.

KSR touches on important human themes: love (of course), but also growing old and senescence, as well as grief. He takes what he built over the last two thousand pages and uses it to try and show us something about ourselves, something we rarely want to see. Whatever we do, no matter how good, mean, strong, weak, tall or small we are. We all eventually die. The ultimate common denominator.

To me, the trilogy is totally worth the time investment. It’s amongst the best science fiction series I’ve read and a remarkable literary accomplishment.