We return to Mars with Green Mars, book two of the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Picking up about fifty years after the end of the previous book it opens with Nirgal, a young man who is a descendant of several of the first hundred and who is constantly pushing himself forward. As he watches the people around him he becomes more and more interested in what constitutes life on Mars and what constitutes relationships and even how all of that ties together. Nirgal ends up finding himself drawn into the politics of Mars as various disparate groups work on figuring out the future of Mars. We then see Art, a man hired by the company Praxis, who is sent to Mars in order to make contact with the various underground organizations in an attempt to figure out where Mars might be going next. Sax then decides to go undercover in one of the settlements in order to find out more about how the terraforming efforts are going and about how the newer settlers on Mars think and feel about the future of Mars as a society. Over time Mars gradually finds itself getting embroiled in what amounts to a revolution of sorts.
I was as impressed with this book as I was with the first book in the series, mostly because of the amount of thought and detail that was present in this book. You can really tell that the world and culture being depicted is very well thought out due to the numerous sub-plots and background details that are remarkably consistent throughout the book. Very few authors seem to be able to pull that off and yet this one seems to be doing an incredible job of it. The plot and storyline are intricate and complex and have numerous moving parts and yet nothing seems to really be getting lost or forgotten if that makes sense. It also did a great job of gradually building up the tension so that it seemed to be extremely slow at first and then extremely fast later on as things started building up. The balance was great as you rarely ended up feeling overwhelmed or like you needed to slow down. On top of that the characters just get more and more detailed and fleshed out over time with more and more development which I greatly enjoyed. Something I noticed about the characters though is the distinctions between the different generations and how that affects the way they view things. I was impressed by how well the author integrated the impacts of immigration on the different generations and the changing cultures created by the immigration. Not many authors can do that very well and even fewer are able to do that with an imaginary culture so I can easily say that this author did a good job. The only thing I did not necessarily like was the time jumps that were present throughout but I can also admit that the judicious use of them does make sense and most of the time it was written in such a way that the missing time didn’t seem overly important. Overall, a great work that I am happy go give 4.5 out of 5 stars.
This is a great example of a science-fiction novel and one that would hold considerable appeal to readers who prefer that genre. I would highly recommend you read the previous book first though as you will definitely be lost otherwise because it contains a lot of necessary background information for this story. If you happen to be a reader who doesn’t overly enjoy science-fiction than this book is probably not for you though you might still consider it anyway. The book, and the series, is aimed at adults and I would definitely agree with that. They are extremely complex and contain numerous adult references though none of them are overly explicit. I would suggest no readers younger than about sixteen or seventeen for this series. The book is really good though and I genuinely hope you will consider trying it out so if you do feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.