Reviews

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

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bassmanvoh's review against another edition

2.0

Well, I'm glad that's over. Though the final two parts (7,8) really made up for a lot of the things this book lacked, it was not enough to dig itself out of the hole I have it in. Long, bland, and flat characters ruin this story. The Sci-fi setting of Mars is always fun for me to dive into because each author has their own ideas about what the planet will be, with similar descriptions to guide the visuals. I thought that Mars would be enough to keep me positive and interested but I truly struggled to get through it.

magzct's review against another edition

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I was recommended this book as one similar to the writing of Michael Crichton. It definitely had strong writing and world building for this trip to Mars, but I was expecting some supernatural element… if that does happen later on in the book, great, but I wasn’t able to stick with it for now. Who knows, maybe I’ll revisit down the road.

dinsdale's review against another edition

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2.0

I wanted to like this book in the worst way; I am fascinated with Mars, I watched the last three rovers land on Mars and follow all their exploits on a regular basis, but this book just had to many issues for me to really like it. I give it a 2 star "it was OK" rating.

What I liked: the voyage to Mars, the first 100 settlers setting up shop, the science behind moving around and surviving on Mars, terraforming, and the space elevator that was eventually set up. I grew to like a couple of the characters in the second half of the book. KSR really knows his science, and even though this book was written in the early 90's the science seemed to be right on for a near-future mission to Mars. The description of the planet's many features was thorough and interesting, and I felt like I was right there as I read a long.

There was a lot that I disliked, though. After the first hundred were carefully chosen, screened, and trained to set things up on Mars, a flood of new folks came to Mars by the thousands. I must have missed the part about how they produced enough food to sustain such a population. Also, some of the new arrivals seemed to have been picked at random because some brought bad attitudes and were looking for reasons to make trouble. Yes, some of the originals rebelled, too, but why Earth would have approved for some of the characters in the later waves to make the trip makes no sense. There were bombs going off and sabotage left and right, and the final uprising in which pretty much everything was destroyed was maddening to this reader. Really? All this time and effort, and billions of dollars spent on establishing a foothold on Mars blown up because of a bunch of rebels? I couldn't buy that. I guess I was looking for more of a forward progressing colonization novel than a off-world disaster novel where almost everything is laid to waste. There were several other things that caused me to groan but I've rambled long enough.

I'll probably continue on with the trilogy eventually.

boomerlusink's review against another edition

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3.0

I enjoyed many parts of this book, like the occasional, very well-executed and conceived bits of dialogue where characters argue opposing views on a variety of interesting topics related to world colonization, sociology, terraforming, etc. Though it was difficult almost the entire time to see the forest through the trees. Robinson's writing reads almost like a scientific paper, in that it is needlessly verbose and confusingly detailed, so that although the bigger moments come through relatively okay, the actual page-to-page goings on are lost in a sea of four letter words and technical jargon. But again, the subject content I found incredibly interesting and well conceived, so I'm considering suffering through the two sequels, but in either case I'm going to take a lengthy break from the mind numbing work of this freakin' guy here.

clint's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

silas_ever's review against another edition

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2.0

I really tried to get into this book. I'm only a mild science fiction fan, and this book was a little heavy on the science geekiness for me. In addition, the character development was virtually non existent...with many more pages being spent on extremely repetitive descriptions of a very boring landscape and made up scientific explanations and ideas about colonizing Mars. I got 300 pages into this book, and not much had really happened plot-wise. I had an idea that I knew what was going to happen in the idea, so I skimmed the last couple chapters.....and I was right. It was rather predictable, and wasn't an interesting reading adventure to get to the end. My husband said everytime I picked up the book I looked like I was having to perform a tedious and inpleasant chore. Which is too bad, I did want to enjoy this book.