BOOK REVIEW: Before Mars (Planetfall, #3) by Emma Newman

Before Mars is the third book in Emma Newman’s loosely related Planetfall series. Curiously, I still have not read the titular first book in the series, Planetfall. There are a  number of reasons for that, but the primary one is that despite having the most number of ratings (11,056) and reviews (1,654) on Goodreads of any of the books in the series, Planetfall also has the lowest average rating, 3.72, which is slightly lower than the 3.75 threshold that I typically use for deciding on whether to start reading a new book. With that said, since I have now read the other books in the series, curiosity will almost certainly lead me to conclude the series by reading the work that was written and published first.

 

Regarding reading order, the author herself says that the Planetfall books can be read in any order. I'm actually not sure I agree with this view that it would lead to the optimal enjoyment of the series. The events of Book 3, Before Mars, and Book 4, Atlas Alone, clearly happen after most of the events of Book 2, After Atlas, and the events of Book 3 and Book 4 overlap somewhat so that these two can be read in any order. Clearly, the events of Book 1, Planetfall, happen before the other three books, but since its primary event (the Pathfinder project leaves Earth on the Atlas spaceship on an interstellar journey to “find God” out among the stars) is referred to in each of the subsequent books in the series, this means that Book 1 can be read at any time. Books 2 and 4 are the ones where there's a definite causal relationship that precludes reading them in a different order. I know this is a bit long, but I think I have talked myself into recommending this reading order: 1, 2, 4, 3. (This is roughly the temporal order in which the events depicted in each book occur.) I also think that books 3 and 4 can be read in any order but must come after book 2. After I read Book 1 I will discuss whether it would be best read before or after the other 3. My reading order will have been 2,4,3,1.

 

This review is about book 3, Before Mars, which I think is the most effective of the four books. The story in Before Mars is told from the perspective of Anna Cubrin, a geologist and painter. Cubrin is the latest addition to a small group of specialists at a Mars base named Principia that is exclusively run and operated by people loyal to Stefan Gabor, a multi-billionaire who I'm pretty sure is one of the rare characters who has a speaking role in all four books.

 

Cubrin is the prototypical unreliable narrator; we discover that her father experienced some kind of mental collapse that led to a near-fatal attack on his wife/Anna’s mother and his subsequent incarceration. As soon as Cubrin arrives at Principia, strange things start to happen which causes her to question her grip on reality and it is during this period that her father’s mental problems are revealed to the reader, as well as Cubrin's fervent wish that the mental collapse that happened to him will not happen to her too. By centering Cubrin’s mental state so early, the author makes it clear that Before Mars will be more of a psychological thriller than its preceding books. The reader also begins to question whether how well Cubrin’s perception of events jibes with reality, which is what the character also does.

The vast majority of the content of Before Mars either takes place in Cubrin’s head or is communicated to the reader in her voice. Oftentimes, this literary device would be unappealing to me but the circumstances here are so unusual and the character is so unlike others that I have spent time with in the first-person in a science fiction story that this time it kept me engrossed in the book.

As the plot proceeds the reader gets more and more examples of things that are not what they seem at Principia, and we also learn more about the other members of the Principia team. We also learn more about Cubrin’s relationship with her husband and infant daughter that she left on Earth and spent 9 months traveling to the red planet to be on Gabor’s payroll to produce paintings of Mars that he intends to send exclusively to private collectors. When events come to a head towards the end of the book (reflecting the effects of events that happened at the end of Book 2), the emotional impact on the reader is immense.

Overall, I think Before Mars is the best of the three Planetfall books I have read so far because while it still contains the technological advances of the other books (machine-neural interfaces that allow artificial intelligence to directly monitor bodily functions and mental well-being; augmented virtual reality called “immersives”; and interplanetary space travel) it has a more compelling (if less likable) central character in Anna Cubrin than Book 2's Carlos Moreno and does a better job of being a psychological thriller than Book 2 did in being a police procedural murder mystery. However, I definitely am curious to see what genre categories Book 1 (Planetfall) straddles and to find out how well it is done.

Title: Before Mars (Planetfall, #3).
Author: Emma Newman.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 352 pages.
Publisher: Ace Books.
Date Published: April 17, 2018.
Date Read: April 13, 2023.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★½☆  (4.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).
PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: After Atlas (Planetfall, #2) by Emma Newman

I have not read any books by Emma Newman before and I usually make a habit of reading the books in a series in story order but After Atlas is the second book in Newman’s 4-part Planetfall series. However, there are multiple reasons why I decided to begin with After Atlas: it’s got the highest average rating of the four Planetfall books (4.18 on a 5.0 scale), the author says that the books can be read in any order, and, most importantly, it’s a rare mystery-science fiction genre hybrid.

After Atlas is about a homicide detective named Carlos Moreno who is asked to investigate the mysterious and gruesome death of Alejandro Casales, the leader of a religious cult known as The Circle based in Texas. Moreno left The Circle at the age of 16 and his father is still a member of the organization. Forty years before the events of After Atlas, Moreno’s mother famously abandoned her family soon after Carlos was born. She left Earth as part of the original Atlas mission in which 1,000 of the planet’s most accomplished scientists and engineers created and successfully launched a spaceship at the behest of another cult leader known as The Pathfinder who claimed that she had been told the galactic coordinates of where to find God.

In the intervening years since he left the Circle, Moreno has had no contact with Casales or his father, for multiple reasons, but also because The Circle has a strong anti-technological philosophy towards the near-ubiquitous brain-embedded chips that have facilitated the underpinnings of modern society. Primary among these is the use of APAs, or Automated Personal Assistants (basically like a souped-up version of Siri powered with artificial intelligence and direct access to monitor all your bodily functions). 

One of the most interesting aspects of After Atlas is its depiction of the world in which the police procedural story takes place. It's basically a corporate dystopia where capitalism has run amok. There are no more independent nations, there are “gov-corps”--basically mergers of corporations and governments. Casales death happened in a fancy hotel in London in what is now known as Norope (i.e., Northern Europe). Because Casales was an American citizen who died in Norope there was a diplomatic standoff which was broken when the parties agreed to let Moreno (with his known previous ties to the Circle and knowledge of Casales) conduct the investigation into the suspicious death. We get to see how Moreno, who it turns out is basically an indentured servant to the Ministry of Justice due to the way he was exploited as a teenager soon after he escaped the Circle, conducts the investigation with all sorts of cool technological tools at his disposal: 4-D virtual reality walkthroughs of the crime scene captured by insect-sized drones, use of APA-enhanced senses during interrogation of witnesses, and access to vast amounts of surveillance data due to the universality of embedded-chips among the general public.

Another interesting aspect of After Atlas is the broad spectrum diversity of the characters. One of the key villains is a billionaire who has a beautiful trophy husband, and a non-binary person (referred to as a “neuter” using ze/hir pronouns) plays an important role in the plot. Clearly the main character has a Latino name and the author goes out of her way to often describe the physical appearance of minor characters to let the reader know that they represent different races and ethnicities.

The story in  After Atlas is an excellent blend of murder mystery and science fiction which is all too rarely done well. By the end we do find out “who did it” but like all good mysteries, the other aspects of the story are equally, if not more, interesting. In this case, Moreno's success at following the threads of the investigation leads to the discovery of corruption and crimes on a global scale and has a profound impact on the character’s future. This leads to quite a dramatic ending of the novel that has an indelible impact on the world we had been introduced to during the course of the novel.

Title: After Atlas (Planetfall, #2)
Author: Emma Newman.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 369 pages.
Publisher: Mullholland Books.
Date Published: November 8, 2016.
Date Read: January 9, 2023.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★½☆  (4.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.