You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Scan barcode
A review by ergative
The Mars House by Natasha Pulley
3.5
Full review up on Nerds of a Feather from 4 January 2024.
This is a real departure from the type of fantasy that Pulley does best. Typically she excels at creating images and events that depend on some sort of magic, which is evoked but never fully explained. It makes for a dreamy quality to her narrative that is quite distinctive of her style.
In this book, she uses a science-fiction setting, and although she evokes otherworldliness in the same way (the floating gravity, the talking mammoths, the misty solar power collectors), she's forced by the strictures of the genre to explain that otherworldliness, and it just doesn't quite work. If Mars is desperately dry and arid, then why does raising the temperature around a solar power generator create mist? Increasing air temperature makes it dryer, not wetter. (This is why we use humidifiers in the winter to combat dry air, and why dew collects at night, when temperatures drop.) Warm air can hold *more* moisture, not less, so if anything the mist should be gathering where the air gets cold, not where it gets warm.
Likewise, the vast differences in strength caused by growing up in different gravity systems are beautifully evoked, but the Harrison-Bergeron-like solution, to put Earthstrong people in cages that increase resistance to muscle movement so they can't accidentally hurt native Martians, also seems to carry some strange magical consequences for muscle mass. Sure, if you can't accidentally punch someone with your full strength, that would work, but it seems that the cages also do things like make it difficult to survive falls that would otherwise pose no danger to Earthstrong muscles. How? Why? If your bones are so dense that the fall won't hurt you at Martian gravities, then why would that impact be more dangerous if you're wearing a cage?
There are lots of examples of this: ideas that are evocative and useful for plotting and pacing and tension and stakes, but which simply don't work if you're trying to come up with a science-fictional type solution for them. With Pulley's approach to fantasy, she can leave it in the misty background. With SF, she can't.
That said, the non-SF books worked wonderfully well. I was extremely impressed at how she manages to create a political debate that both reflects current concerns over topical issues like climate refugees and immigration, and also doesn't have a knee-jerk 'these guys are the baddies' side to it. Both sides have genuinely good points.
It's not Pulley's best work. But I devoured it in a day, and will devour her next, because even Pulley's not-best work is still good stuff.
[Thanks to Netgalley for ARC]
This is a real departure from the type of fantasy that Pulley does best. Typically she excels at creating images and events that depend on some sort of magic, which is evoked but never fully explained. It makes for a dreamy quality to her narrative that is quite distinctive of her style.
In this book, she uses a science-fiction setting, and although she evokes otherworldliness in the same way (the floating gravity, the talking mammoths, the misty solar power collectors), she's forced by the strictures of the genre to explain that otherworldliness, and it just doesn't quite work. If Mars is desperately dry and arid, then why does raising the temperature around a solar power generator create mist? Increasing air temperature makes it dryer, not wetter. (This is why we use humidifiers in the winter to combat dry air, and why dew collects at night, when temperatures drop.) Warm air can hold *more* moisture, not less, so if anything the mist should be gathering where the air gets cold, not where it gets warm.
Likewise, the vast differences in strength caused by growing up in different gravity systems are beautifully evoked, but the Harrison-Bergeron-like solution, to put Earthstrong people in cages that increase resistance to muscle movement so they can't accidentally hurt native Martians, also seems to carry some strange magical consequences for muscle mass. Sure, if you can't accidentally punch someone with your full strength, that would work, but it seems that the cages also do things like make it difficult to survive falls that would otherwise pose no danger to Earthstrong muscles. How? Why? If your bones are so dense that the fall won't hurt you at Martian gravities, then why would that impact be more dangerous if you're wearing a cage?
There are lots of examples of this: ideas that are evocative and useful for plotting and pacing and tension and stakes, but which simply don't work if you're trying to come up with a science-fictional type solution for them. With Pulley's approach to fantasy, she can leave it in the misty background. With SF, she can't.
That said, the non-SF books worked wonderfully well. I was extremely impressed at how she manages to create a political debate that both reflects current concerns over topical issues like climate refugees and immigration, and also doesn't have a knee-jerk 'these guys are the baddies' side to it. Both sides have genuinely good points.
It's not Pulley's best work. But I devoured it in a day, and will devour her next, because even Pulley's not-best work is still good stuff.
[Thanks to Netgalley for ARC]