Saturday, August 8, 2009

Review of Joe Haldeman’s 2008 novel Marsbound

The sci-fi and fantasy blog Keeping the Door has a lengthy review of Marsbound (Ace Books, 2008), a Young Adult novel starring 19-year-old Carmen Dula, written by award-winning SF author Joe Haldeman. Here are the opening lines of the review:

“Joe Haldeman’s Marsbound can best be compared to the pop music of an idol like Britney Spears. It’s an easy and comfortable journey, but ultimately leaves the reader feeling unsatisfied due to its lack of deeper substance, real human emotion and complex ideas. [...]”

I read Marsbound last year and, although I agree with many of the reviwer’s points, I recommend it.

3 comments:

Republibot 3.0 said...

I'm new here, so please forgive me if you've already discussed this, but the Brittany Spears reference reminded me strongly of "Rolling Thunder," by John Varely, about a young Martian singer who ends up stumbling on to an entirely new genre of music.

Actually, the whole "Thunder and Lightning" series is centered on Mars, and is a lot of fun: Red Thunder, Red Lighting, Rolling Thunder, and back in February he told me the fourth-and-final book in the series will be called Dark Lightning.

Again, if you've already discussed these books, please forgive me for bringing it up.

Paul said...

Yeah, I read "Rolling Thunder" last year. I thought it was an easy read and a decent book. I haven't read the two other books in Varley's Mars series and I was not aware that a fourth was forthcoming. Thanks for the tip!

Republibot 3.0 said...

Happy to be of service.