The Mars House
ISBN: 9781399618557
Description
January Stirling was one of the principal dancers of London's Royal Ballet. Now he's a climate refugee bound for Tharsis, the notorious terraformed colony on Mars. It's a utopia for the naturalised population. For January, as a dangerous Earthstronger whose body is unadjusted to the weaker Martian gravity, it's a life sentence to hard labour and ferocious discrimination. But he will live. Aubrey Gale, energy trillionaire and hereditary senator, is running for election on a hardline platform to protect the native population from dangerous immigrants. The path to equality is simple, requiring all Earthstrongers who choose to come to Mars to undergo the disabling and sometimes fatal process of surgical naturalisation. Which is no life at all. When a disastrous media encounter plunges Aubrey and January's lives into chaos, the solution is a five-year made-for-reality-TV marriage that could secure January's future and ensure Aubrey's political success, but it soon becomes clear that thousands of lives hang in the balance, and nothing is as it seems.
Reviewed on 26th April 2025
A post-apocalyptic science fiction political romance thriller about a ballet dancer on Mars. What more could you ask?
This is one of those books where the cover alone sold it to me, it sat on my shelf for months, and then when I finally picked it up I loved it so much and wanted more.
It’s so hard to talk about the plot without spoiling anything, but it totally blew away my expectations and kept me surprised throughout. The character is super engaging, the world-building is stunning, there’s so much going on and I could spend so much time in this universe.
And it’s also insightful. There’s a ton of stuff about the human condition, commentary on our real world situations, but without ever feeling like it’s lecturing.
A wonderful book that I enjoyed throughout. I just wanted more!