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This is a frustrating chimera. A 5 star book and a 2 star book occupying the same space at the same time.
The good: On the one hand, it's an uncompromisingly hard sci-fi examination of the colonizing of Mars. Much time is spent on by how many milibars of pressure each human intervention could raise the atmospheric pressure. Likewise a lot of consideration is given to the psychology and sociology of founding a new civilization. This is the content I was craving in a "The Martian but smarter" or "a more detailed prequel to the Expanse".
Now the bad: In spite the ambitious, decades spanning scope, it's a sparsely populated novel. Of 100 original colonists, only about 10 get names and roles in the story, and of those, I could only describe the personalities of 5..or fewer, depending on the situation. Characters lack consistent depth and instead serve more as avatars of colonization challenges (one scientist is relentlessly pro terraforming, another is dogmatically opposed. Nothing in their inner lives is revealed to explain these positions; they just exist because these are issues worth talking about in a Martian colonization novel). More frustrating, even once you accept these characters-as-issues, the relevant conflicting characters rarely get time together to resolve issues. There are way too many pages devoted to characters traveling Mars and describing scenery, even during the climax.
In summary, there is an exciting and awe-inspiring Martian novel in here, but also a dull sightseeing affair with paper thin cutouts. Maybe the sequels improve upon the latter, but I don't find myself compelled to find out.
The good: On the one hand, it's an uncompromisingly hard sci-fi examination of the colonizing of Mars. Much time is spent on by how many milibars of pressure each human intervention could raise the atmospheric pressure. Likewise a lot of consideration is given to the psychology and sociology of founding a new civilization. This is the content I was craving in a "The Martian but smarter" or "a more detailed prequel to the Expanse".
Now the bad: In spite the ambitious, decades spanning scope, it's a sparsely populated novel. Of 100 original colonists, only about 10 get names and roles in the story, and of those, I could only describe the personalities of 5..or fewer, depending on the situation. Characters lack consistent depth and instead serve more as avatars of colonization challenges (one scientist is relentlessly pro terraforming, another is dogmatically opposed. Nothing in their inner lives is revealed to explain these positions; they just exist because these are issues worth talking about in a Martian colonization novel). More frustrating, even once you accept these characters-as-issues, the relevant conflicting characters rarely get time together to resolve issues. There are way too many pages devoted to characters traveling Mars and describing scenery, even during the climax.
In summary, there is an exciting and awe-inspiring Martian novel in here, but also a dull sightseeing affair with paper thin cutouts. Maybe the sequels improve upon the latter, but I don't find myself compelled to find out.