Take a photo of a barcode or cover
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.