April 2016 Discussion: Red Mars (spoilers)
 

The time has come to discuss the April 2016 MobileRead Book Club selection, Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. What did you think?

Let you know after I read 12% more of the book.

Still slogging through it. But honestly, it feels like that.

I'm not yet finished. But I will chime in once I am.

I woke up this morning with 7% left to go. I plan to finish it today.

You will be done before me. My in-laws are moving and I've not had as much time to read as I'd like.

I'm now at 99%. I just finished what I think is the penultimate chapter, and it was probably the longest in the book.

Finally finished a while ago. This book was long and seemed long. The characters were well-drawn, and... I did think the editing could have been tighter, and the overall length either reduced or broken into two books; probably both.

I completely agree with that. I kept finding excuses to not read which is not a good sign.

I also agree that Frank's character was the most interesting, although I don't think he really redeemed himself. I keep wondering how things would have turned out if he hadn't been actively trying to gain influence and cause problems for John. Or even if he hadn't gone off the deep end after John's murder and abandoned everything for so long. He really left a hole that the transnats were more than willing to fill.

Of the other characters, Nadia was my favorite POV character despite being fairly one dimensional. All of the others just irritated me. Maya, Ann, Sax, Phyllis, etc. Although Ann's POV did lessen my dislike for her. The other POV characters all reinforced it.

I thought the last 1/3 was very good and wished we would have gotten there sooner. The ending wasn't satisfying at all as the end to a complete story, this was obviously always intended to be the first in a series.

The obvious social commentary that corporations are becoming too powerful and politicians are dirty feels very at home right now and in this US election cycle especially.

In the end, the last 1/3 of the book convinced me to read the next book not because of any of the characters, I really don't care about any of them, but because I want to see how the Martian society as a whole develops and gets some freedom from UNOMA/transnat control.

I concede defeat. I just can't seem to manage to finish this thing. I pick it up, read 10 or 20 minutes, something interrupts, and when I come back, I read something else cause I just can't manage to care about this book. It's too long and tedious. At 300, or even 400, pages, it would have been a tight and interesting book.

Final rating: 2 Stars, and abandoned.

And another thing. What is UNOMA? If it was explained in the book, I surely missed it. Wikipedia says it stands for United Nations Organization Mars Authority, but an online review of the book says it stands for United Nations Office of Martian Affairs.

I want to say it was the first one, Mars Authority, but I already returned my copy to the library so I can't look it up to be sure. I do remember wondering what the acronym stood for several times, it would have helped if he had re-stated it a couple more times.

United Nations Office of Martian Affairs. I finally found the reference. On page 165 there is a reference to the "U.N. Office of Martian Affairs in New York". Then starting on page 166 every subsequent reference is simply to "UNOMA".

I feel that an interesting general theme of the book is that all human beings--even those, who in this case, were selected as paragons--share the inner darkness of humanity and are deeply fallible. Human society fails and fragments because of the intrinsic nature of people.

I would agree that the book seriously needed editing but improved in the later sections.

I think this review is fairy even-handed. One of the points made regarding the dated international political situation is immediately apparent but some of the other contrivances are more serious. On the other hand there is recognition of some very effective imaginative qualities.

Personally, outside of Nadia, I found most of the characters unsympathetic. I don't think I'll read the next two books in the near future.

http://www.complete-review.com/revie...ks/redmars.htm

Some related discussion going on in the 2016 challenge thread:

I did find the book could have been trimmed down without losing much if anything. For example, the scene with the psychiatrist just before he joined Hiroko's group could have been cut or seriously shortened.

I did like seeing how humanity handled colonizing Mars and they turned out (overall) to be no better then humanity is on Earth.

Just as we got to know John, he was killed and then we got to know Frank and when we find out that Frank killed John, there goes any liking for Frank. Phyllis turned out to be a traitor to the first 100. It was an interesting mish-mash of characters. I am going to continue the series because I want to know what happens next.