Bookish Thoughts

I'm glad I read this trilogy. There were a lot of neat ideas, a cool exploration of both cutting-edge science and sociopolitical ideas. The writing was occasionally incredible. But this book was so bloated, and it went on way too long. By the end, I was only reading out of spite. A perverse need to finish the damn book. I actually fell asleep with 5 pages left and never went back to finish it, but I'm calling it good enough. And I'm glad that Sax and Ann managed to work out their differences.  But mostly I just want to play Terraforming Mars again, to see how it compares to the books.

This book was a bit bloated, but I think it ended up being my favorite of the trilogy. It was a decent balance of familiar faces and new ones. The timeline was nice and linear. The science was interesting, as was the revolution storyline. Some of the prose is startlingly lovely, and I enjoyed most of the time I spent on this hypothetical Mars.

But things change as time passes; nothing lasts, not even stone, not even happiness.  This book came highly recommended. At Thanksgiving a few years ago, a friend mentioned really liking it, which put in on my radar. Later, someone else said it was one of their favorites, which always pushes something higher up my to-read list. And then I discovered that the board game Terraforming Mars was based on this trilogy, and I knew I had to read it. I'm not sure I'd call this book a favorite, though it was interesting. Sending people to Mars, establishing a colony, eventually transforming it to support life is an incredibly exciting and compelling idea. And these books do it well. The science is in depth, though outdated, and the challenges humanity faces are real and hard. This is a very interesting book. But it's also a very dense and occasionally dry book. It took me a really long time to get through, and I had to skim a few passages that I found too boring. Then again, sometime...