14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beer as a Necessary Ingredient to Taming Mars, January 29, 2009
With a title evoking the romances of Edgar Rice Burroughs, you might expect this to be a rip-roaring adventure with little in the way of nuance or deep ideas. But Ms. Baker is a little more subtle than that, and what you actually get in this book is a scenario for really colonizing Mars in the face of strong bureaucratic pressure and bumbling plus a lack of interest and funding from Earth.
She peoples her planet with some strong if idiosyncratic characters, including a bar owner (the Empress) who also holds advanced degrees in biology, a lawyer (a lawyer? On Mars?) who seems bent on stymieing the bureaucrats just for the fun of it, an autistic mechanical/electronic genius, a one-eyed refugee from a certain religious persuasion, and a conman/gambler. Not quite the list of people you would normally make up as prime candidates for accomplishing the task of turning Mars into something at least marginally habitable.
There's quite a bit of satire and a fair amount of humor here, but running underneath it all is quite a statement about what makes and keeps people motivated to attempt the impossible, with some strong support for the concept of capitalism. As such, this book stands in counterpoint to Kim Stanley Robinson's excellent Red, Green, and Blue Mars set, which at least at its beginning was based more on the communistic ideal. Both books get their science right, which contributes a lot to the believability of the situation and the actions of the characters. Unlike Robinson's work, which bogged down in places in extreme technical and geographic detail (but which eventually contributed greatly to its scope and scale), this work gives just enough information about the conditions and science involved to keep the reader satisfied that this is a real world.
In all, this is a fun, easy reading romp with a lot hiding just below the surface, well worth your time.
---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great new entry in Baker's excellent Company series, May 20, 2009
This is a great novel-length adaptation of the original The Empress of Mars novella (published by Nightshade Books a few years back). Most of the book is set in "The Empress of Mars", the only bar on the young Mars colony. Mary Griffith barely manages to keep the bar solvent, helped by her three daughters and a number of outcasts (some of whom you'll be familiar with if you've read Baker's short story in The New Space Opera).
Kage Baker really shows off her trademark wit and easy-flowing style in this funny and at times moving story. In the novella, there were some subtle links to Kage Baker's main Company series. The links are much clearer in the novel-length version, including the appearance of two Company operatives and a strong link to one of the main plot lines of the series.
If you've read Baker's Company books, I'd call this one a must-read - you will definitely enjoy this book. If you're not familiar with the series yet, it's actually not a bad place to start because it stands outside of the main plot, but I'd still recommend to start with In the Garden of Iden.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stupendous, June 16, 2009
Comedy or Commentary?
Who wouldn't want to go to Mars and be a pioneer?
The settlement of a new planet administered by the British Arean Company attracted all sorts of settlers. Engineers, outcasts, cooks, labourers and dreamers traveled to terraform the Red Giant. Years into the project the BAC realized that they could not turn a profit , and they abandoned the settlers, leaving them to fend for themselves.
Mary Griffith, owner of the Empress of Mars, is trapped by her poverty and lease with the BAC. When a family friend (Cochevelou) offers to sell his 20 acre spread that happens to include a stable supply of barley, her future is nearly secured. While `working' a barren piece of land, she uncovers a rock that proves to be her fortune. As with any community, the local watering hole becomes a central home for barter, news, and networking. The `Empress' matron, Mary, and her daughters, Manco Inca, Ottorino Vespucci, and the Dutch agent, Mr De Wit form an entertaining, complex web of characters that keep you laughing, and yet, yearning to be a pioneer at the edge of change.
There is no stopping a population that sniffs opportunity. Cast off geniuses have a knack for creating big things out of nothing. Consider the biis (drones)(bees?), the magma well, and the unique Clan Morrigan structures.
Keen readers of Martian novels will recognize scores of cultural references. There is Uncle Tars Tarkas, thoats, the `Empress of Mars' even , Barsoom day, Gwynned, Santa Claus, Amadeus, H P Lovecraft, J K Potter, and many others that display a keen knowledge of contemporary and classic literature. I think Edgar Rice Burroughs would be pleased with the compliment, but I'm not sure that Tars Tarkas was really `cute' and thoats were comparable to reindeer.
I was very keenly interested in the novel from a thematic sense as well. As a Canadian, I live in a country that was founded by the Hudson's Bay Company and in a province whose land was granted by the Queen. Just like this novel, mineral rights and leases are controlled by a foreign concern, that knows nothing of the territory except the profit and loss.
This, however, is beneath the surface, and the rich characters drive the book. Kage Baker is an amazing novelist with a gift that few authors posess.
Bring them on!
Tim Lasiuta
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