Green Mars

Reading Red Mars blew my mind. Reading Green Mars was a chore. Part of the issue is that we've seen a lot of this before. The sixth trans-world rover ride, complete with painstaking multi-page descriptions of the Martian landscape, does not make the same impact as the first. And Robinson's characters grow tiresome. There are only so many self-satisfied scientists that one can stomach. Given his stature, Robinson's work is perhaps beyond the claws of a sharp editor. The reader is worse off for it.