Rapid Reviews - Red Mars

Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson: Like the Years of Rice and Salt, this book focuses on a small group of people through historical events. Unlike the other, the story doesn't follow them through the afterlife, just through the events in their first lives. The story covers the journey of the first set of colonists to Mars right up until the... well, that would be telling. Let's just say some major events happen in the years covered by this book. Like the other book I've read by Robinson, the point of view changes from character to character throughout the book, and you develop a deeper understanding of the whole situation as you look at the world through each set of eyes. The descriptions and explanations of the tech are only as complicated as needed to get across the story, but are detailed enough to ignite the imagination. Each event hits hard, and late in the book when a particular death occurs, I think I actually grieved... until I remembered it was a fictional death of a character who had never existed. I plan on reading the other books in the series, but I think I'll wait until I'm a little more caught up on some of my other reading... In the meantime, this one gets a solid four and a half starfish.