Kage Baker's new novel The Empress of Mars receives positive reviews

The Empress of Mars (2009), a new full-length novel written by well-known author Kage Baker and published earlier this month as a hardcover trade edition by Tor Books, is generating some positive reviews. Expanded from Baker’s 2003 novella of the same name and following the publication of a limited edition novel by Subterranean Press in late 2008, the plot revolves around The Empress of Mars, a bar run by character Mary Griffith on a colonial Mars controlled by the British Arean Company.

According to reader Marissa Lingen, “It's not a book that's doing something startlingly new, and it's not exploring serious areas of the human psyche, and that's okay; sometimes you need a book that rolls and crashes along with plenty of cool bits with dust storms and
‘Martian porcelain’ and the characters you like getting their own back against those who would oppress them.”

In a lengthy and excellent review, librarian Mike Ferrante concludes, in part: “With its slow beginning The Empress of Mars had me worried that it just wouldn’t hold my interest. However, the characters of Baker’s novel, like the red dust of the planet its set on, managed to work their under my skin until they felt like they were a part of me; like they were my own family.”