The Strange

Randomly picked up after seeing glowing reviews on Twitter. Can't say I really understand why. The main character is annoying, and there are a lot of inconsistencies in the narrative. I also don't really understand how a spaceship that's been shot through with multiple bullet holes can be ‘patched up' in a day or two enough to survive 6 months of space travel from Mars to Earth. I'm assuming that this is what ‘steampunk' means: science fiction with rivets. Regardless, it rattles along at a fairly brisk pace to its less than satisfactory conclusion.

The thing that saves this from 2* review is that the ‘strange' of the title is an incredible conceit, a really fascinating idea. Mars is alive, and it's suffusing the humans and their technology with its own consciousness. This idea appears about two-thirds of the way through, at which point it's a bit too late to do anything interesting with the idea. Shame this wasn't made more of.