In the wake of environmental catastrophe, January, once a principal in London’s Royal Ballet, has become a refugee on Tharsis, the terraformed colony on Mars. In Tharsis, January’s life is dictated by his status as an Earthstronger-a person whose body is not adjusted to Mars’s lower gravity and so poses a danger to those born on, or naturalized to, Mars. January’s job choices, housing, and even transportation options are dictated by this second-class status, and now a xenophobic politician named Aubrey Gale is running on a platform that would make it all worse: Gale wants all Earthstrongers to be surgically naturalized, a process that is always disabling and can be deadly.
When Gale chooses January for an on-the-spot press junket interview that goes horribly awry, January’s life is thrown into chaos, but Gale’s political fortunes are damaged, too. Gale proposes a solution to both their problems: a five year made-for-the-press marriage that would secure January’s future without immediate naturalization and ensure Gale’s political future. But when January accepts the offer, he discovers that Gale is not at all like they appear in the press. They’re kind, compassionate, and much more difficult to hate than January would wish. But as their romantic relationship develops, the political situation worsens, and January discovers Gale has an enemy, someone willing to destroy all of Tharsis to make them pay – and January may be the only person standing in the way.
A tender and sweet story that is in part a political thriller, in part a romance, set on Mars in the near future in which the kindest characters have the most objectionable politics. As a political commentary it was, for me, not unproblematic; as a character-driven romance, it was tender.
What I Liked
- The relationship between Gale and January was genuinely sweet and did have echoes of Thaniel and Mori;
- Philosophising mammoths – what more is needed to be said about that?
What Could Have Been Different
- Structurally, the opening parts of the novel felt very slow – I know there was a degree of world building and exposition required but the first half felt… heavy
- Also structurally, there are some significant twists in the novel that felt a little abrupt
- No octopusses
I’ve only just finished this one and my thoughts still feel rather confused…
Firstly, let’s get the context out of the way: I have really loved everything I’ve read from Natasha Pulley: from The Watchmaker on Filigree Street to The Half-Life of Valerie K – I do prefer her more fantastical historical re-imagined settings. I love her world building, the tenderness of her characters’ relationships, the lgbtqia representation… So I was really excited to see The Mars House appear on NetGalley!
And, certainly I enjoyed it… eventually.
The premise is interesting: at some point in the future, Mars has been colonised for some generations now and is being run as an independent state. It’s inhabitants have adapted genetically to eliminate gender – very native Martian is a Mx and uses them / they pronouns – and to adapt to the new conditions becoming taller, slimmer, weaker, better adapted to the lower pressure and gravity. Simultaneously, the climate crisis on Earth has made life there generally untenable. A flow of refugees from Earth to Mars looks likely to become a flood.
January Stirling is one of those refugees, confined to wear a cage to limit his physical strength – the book repeatedly tells us that Earthstrongers are three times as strong as their Natural counterparts – life on Mars is not a great experience. Once the lead at the Royal Ballet, January is now one of the Earthstrongers, exploited for their utility in manual labour jobs and under constant threat of Naturalisation, an invasive and brutal procedure to reduce his sterngth to be commensurate with Natural Martians.
An unguarded comment in an interview with Senator Gale – who wants to resist immigration and compel naturalisation – leads to January’s arrest and, as a publicity stunt in the u0coming elections, Gale’s propsal of marriage on his release. It is a little bit of a strain on credulity but, okay…
January and Gale’s mutual dance around each others feelings, navigating their own fears and suspicions of the other was by turns sweet, frustrating and tender. It also felt a little drawn out despite the rather half hearted bomb threat.
The pace of the novel really picks up when a massive months-long dust storm is generated – an attempt to undermine Gale’s election prospects as he is responsible for power on Mars. Combined with a mysterious person in an orange jumper, rumours of ghosts, a suspicious Consul and omnipresent media cameras, Gale struggles to erect a massive tower to raise solar arrays into orbit to survive the dust storm, before refugee ships carrying uranium, people and potentially an army arrive to usurp him.
For me, although I did love the characters – Gale’s love of etymology and of mammoths was compelling and charming; January was sweet – I found the structure a little jarring. There was a secondary plot surrounding the disappearance of Gale’s first consort – Alex and River – in suspicious circumstances and a huge revelation dropped onto the reader. Perhaps more time spent with Gale, Alex and River – perhaps chapters alternating between the past and present – could have both raised the pace of the first half and cemented those characters more clearly in the readers’ minds, preparing us for the revelatory moment.
Pulley does seem to have a predilection for power imbalances in relationships: Thaniel and Mori, Merrick and Raphael, Valerie and Shenkov, all have massive power inequalities, and yet they are all tender and careful. This novel does explicitly address this issue: the earthstrongers are terrifying because they are three times stronger and can cause terrible numbers of injuries and deaths, but there are more forms of power than political power. The Natural Mars inhabitants are physically weaker but tall and looming, their social class and education and privilege as well as their political power make them even more terrifying in many ways than the earthstrongers.
It was brave of Pulley to evoke so directly the issue of immigration, and to present us with a charming character whose policies of compulsory Naturalisation were abhorrent. January, after his time in prison, was on the verge of giving up and going to be Naturalised and the consequences were horrific and crippling, if not fatal – especially to someone used to having the strength and grace of a dancer. It is as an escape from that horrific decision that prompts him to marry Gale – and it is a fate that always looms over him, at the end of the fixed-term five-year marriage, in the event that Gale wins the election. Would Pulley force him to cripple himself? Or does she shoehorn in a happy ending? I have to say that the ending of the novel was very optimistic but very forced and struck me as rather contrived. It did leave a sour taste.
Finally, I did love some of the smaller quirkier details – the footnotes, the little nod to Mori and Daughter watchmakers of Filigree Street and, although I was disappointed by the lack of octopuses, I did enjoy the titanic mammoths especially as they start to philosophies and show a humanity and compassion that some of the actual humans struggled to achieve!
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