Subject: Review: BLUE MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 20:33:58 GMT

[this review covers the third book in the trilogy.  There are no explicit
spoilers, but people who have not read the first two volumes should still be
aware.]

                   BLUE MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		    Copyright 1996 Evelyn C. Leeper

     Well, Kim Stanley Robinson has finally finished his Mars trilogy and,
while it may be heresy to say this, I'm glad it's over.  It is possible that
if I had read the whole trilogy at one time, I might have enjoyed the third
book more, but the fact is that finishing it was more a chore than a
pleasure.

     Maybe it's just my reaction to massive multi-volume series that take
years to finish.  Orson Scott Card took so long for his latest Alvin book to
come out that I had completely lost interest.  The current Turtledove World
War series is another one that started out good, but two years later is
bogging down, as I try to reconstruct enough of the earlier books to have
the current one mean something.  And even Robinson, whose work I generally
love, cannot overcome this problem.

     In the first book, RED MARS, Robinson sets the stage, introduces the
characters, and gives us a clear picture of what is happening.  Though
obviously there was room for a sequel, the book did stand on its own.  In
GREEN MARS he continues the story, with even more emphasis on the technical
aspects.  But because it was a continuation, GREEN MARS did not stand on its
own, having no real beginning and no real end in itself.  In spite of this,
it won a Hugo.  I was happy to see Robinson win a Hugo -- I just wish it had
been for one of his other works.

     Now in BLUE MARS we have an end.  There is, of course, always room for
a sequel set on "blue Mars," but it is not necessary and I doubt Robinson
will write one.  However, we still have no beginning per se.  We also have
tons more technical areological and terraforming discussions and
explications, and some characterization, mostly to wrap up the stories of
the people we have been following throughout.  With all this technical
detail, it's almost inevitable there will be slip-ups.  For example, "Hindu"
is not a language [page 406].

     I wanted to like this book.  But I have to say it was too much of a
good thing, too stretched out.  I'm not even sure why I am saying this.
People who read the first two will probably read this one for a sense of
closure in any case, and people who didn't probably wouldn't read this
anyway.  I suppose if you want to read the entire trilogy through you will
appreciate this more, but that's not likely to encompass a large number of
readers.

%T      Blue Mars
%A      Kim Stanley Robinson
%C      New York
%D      July 1996
%I      Bantam Spectra
%O      hardback, US$22.95
%G      ISBN 0-553-10144-7
%P      624pp
%S      Mars
%V      3

Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | [email-masked]
"The tendency toward good in human nature has a force which no creed can
utterly counteract, and which insures the ultimate triumph of that tendency
over all dogmatic perversions."  --George Eliot, "Evangelical Teaching"