DNF @50%

Since this is an ARC, my decision to DNF this doesn't comes easily. But, I am halfway through and I am just not enjoying reading this book.

It has such a great concept and theme but, sadly, I don't think this book was for me.

In the months between reading The Half Life of Valery K and The Mars House, I made a promise with myself: if Natasha Pulley’s next book didn’t do away with the misogyny that has characterised her previous five books to varying degrees (as I mentioned in my Valery K review), then I would give up on her future books. Well, I have good news on that front, because there was no misogyny in this one!

If only because there were no women* whatsoever.

Now, this really isn’t my primary issue with the book, except that I think it ties in with a general misunderstanding of gender which undercuts anything this book might be trying to say about the topic (this is, to be perfectly honest, my most generous take on it. That it’s trying to say anything at all, notwithstanding the question of whether it’s capable of doing so). No, this is merely a single issue within a sea of them, which, lucky you!, I will be enumerating in this review. Stop reading now if you want to a. avoid spoilers, or b. simply desire the feeling of wanting to read this book. For those of you who read further, well. Godspeed.

There are very few reviews which I can’t just write from my notes, but my notes are so long and cumbersome for this one that I have actually needed to sit down and get them in order before even attempting a review. In trying to group together all of my problems here, I think most of it comes down to failures in worldbuilding. A second, smaller but not more minor, set of issues relates to the characters. A final set — and this one I can call more minor — regards Pulley’s writing itself, which I never thought I’d say, having loved it in at least four of her previous five. Oh and then, one big glaring, what the fuck bit.

So, let’s take them one by one.

— The worldbuilding.

1. Gender.

We’re starting with one of the two big issues straight up and that’s Pulley’s treatment of gender. Or, to be more exact, the way she has created a society without gender. Firstly, I have to say, reading this at the same time as Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch, a sci-fi series that thinks about gender in an interesting way, was a mistake. All it did was show up how badly it was done here.

Pulley’s concept of gender is solely based on pronoun use. It took me a little while to figure it out (mostly because I couldn’t believe the justification would be this inane), but the reason everyone on Mars uses they pronouns is twofold: one, they all speak Mandarin and, because in spoken Mandarin ‘he’ and ‘she’ sound the same, they decided instead to just make it a ‘they’ pronoun and apply it to everyone. Thus, we have a distinction between the “civilised” Martians (who are a few generations removed from having travelled from Earth to Mars) who only use ‘they’, and the “uncivilised” refugees who still insist on using ‘he’ and ‘she’. And secondly, while choosing to use ‘they’ — which I also want to note was, it sounds, just an arbitrary decision — they also eliminated “extreme gender traits” in DNA. Whatever that means!

All of this, I think, just shows a fundamental misunderstanding of our own concept of gender in the 21st century, let alone what a concept of gender a few decades down the line might look like. But what we can safely say is that, if it’s not based on pronouns now, it’s hardly going to suddenly convert to being based on pronouns in the future, is it? Not to mention the whole pronouns thing is actually being translated from Mandarin to make this happen. The characters are speaking Mandarin as the book happens, albeit a Mandarin which has had a few generations to develop from Mandarin as we know it now (enough, it seems, for Mars to exact genetic alterations on humans too, while not being that far removed into the future. And here I was thinking these things moved slowly…). I could buy that there’s a ‘they’ pronoun developed in this futuristic Mandarin. I cannot buy that they basically said “well, these two words sound the same so let’s merge them together”. That is. Not how language works! Not to mention that these words in written Mandarin are still different. You can’t just smush them together and translate them as ‘they’ because they sound the same. Are you going to do that in English for ‘sun’ and ‘son’? No! And, even in spoken Mandarin, there’ll often be context to tell you which pronoun the speaker means, so I would imagine it’s rarely hugely ambiguous. Mandarin speakers are not considering themselves to be going around calling everyone ‘they’ because the words sound the same. (Plus, I feel it’s somewhat disrespectful to nonbinary Mandarin speakers who, you know, might want their own pronouns?)

Moving on from the pronouns, let’s come to this whole thing of eliminating extreme gender traits from DNA, thus effectively making everyone agender. It’s hard to put into words just how much this whole idea wants to poke my eyes out. It plays exactly into TERF rhetoric that gender equals biology. By removing the “biology” (questionable to say the least?), you remove the “gender”. So our agender society has TERF-y logic underpinning it. Combine this with the part I mentioned at the start where using ‘they’ makes you “civilised” and ‘he’ or ‘she’ “uncivilised” and you get some really weird shit. There are “pro-gender” terrorists in this and I cannot for the life of me tell if it’s some TERF allegory, or in which direction it’s meant to be. Are the Martians TERFs because of their biological understanding of gender? Are the Earth diaspora TERFs because of their insistence on clinging to Earth ideas of gender (which, by the way, does not appear to include nonbinary or trans people in itself)? Is everyone a TERF???

One piece more of information can inform us here: in creating an agender society, Natasha Pulley has, barring the minorest of minor characters, entirely eradicated women from her novel. Maybe no one’s a TERF then. Don’t need feminism if you don’t have women!

(That’s sarcastic, btw.)

2. In-world racism.

Second of the major issues with worldbuilding regards the in-world concepts of racism, and how exactly characters are racist. This is a book about anti-immigrant politics, about a politician whose entire platform rests on xenophobic and racist rhetoric. Basically, what we have here is a book that essentially translates as “far right politician forced to fake-date political opposite and they fall in love”. And yes, I should absolutely have read that blurb and stayed the fuck away. Alas, I do not appear to possess basic survival instincts, but, since I did read this, I can detail exactly what’s awful about it!

Let me just say, overall this felt like a very strange take from a British author in the midst of such an anti-immigration Tory government. I don’t want to make any assumptions about Pulley’s personal politics, but uh. Yeah. You’ll see why.

Once again, Pulley demonstrates a fundamental lack of knowledge about how racism works, and falls straight into that SFF trap that has authors try to justify racism (see this article [https://medium.com/@RealDorianDawes/ethics-in-magical-world-building-fantasy-bigotry-9afba2cb3dcd] for explanation if you don’t already know this part). It turns out that humans coming to Mars from Earth are, due to the differences in gravity, automatically bigger and stronger than Martians who’ve spent years there and who are frail and fragile in comparison. So much that an Earther might easily kill a Martian with just a tap and are thus forced to remain in literal cages as they go about their day. The reason our love interest in particular is xenophobic is because they were attacked by an Earther and injured a little while before the events of the book take place. Thus, they choose to call for all Earthers to be surgically altered so they’re less strong and pose no threat to Martians (a surgery which drastically ruins Earther quality of life, by the by).

Now, January — January is the most frustrating protagonist in this respect. Instead of challenging Gale on his bigotry, he tries to accommodate them. He’s repeatedly saying he disagrees with the idea that Earthers are dangerous, only to turn around and say “well, we are dangerous, we might accidentally kill a Martian”, like he’s justifying it. He wears his cage almost permanently around Gale, and even hands them the key to it, so he can’t take it off until Gale decides they’re not scared of him any longer (a decision which has a negative impact on his own health). He spends a lot of the time advocating for his own oppression. A common conversation between January and Gale will go like so:

GALE, A BIGOT: Earthstrongers must be all surgically altered so they’re not dangerous to native Martians.

JANUARY, A WET DRIP: You’re a bigot! But actually, you’re right because we are soooo much stronger and sooooo dangerous to you guys :( Yes, we should all be kept in cages :(

I don’t even think you can make the effective argument that January’s been indoctrinated by Martian bigotry because he’s not even been there a year! He fails to conform to the pronouns thing, but he’s perfectly happy considering himself dangerous and a potential killer all the time? Uh, okay. It takes a good half of the book for January to stand up to Gale’s xenophobia in any way, at which point it suddenly becomes justified for another reason. Great!

There are another couple of questionable aspects to mention before we move on (okay, questionable might be too weak a word). Firstly, there’s an undercurrent of suspicion that the immigrants are coming over to subsume the Martian colony back into Earth China, which isn’t that challenged. I mean, it’s revealed that the end that the non-fascist politician is actually working to do this, so it’s almost like… fascist good??? Secondly, the plot ends with the building of an immigration detention centre. I kid you not, that’s how they resolve the arrival of these refugees. By building a detention centre.

But don’t worry, it’s a nice detention centre! It has toilets and everything!

3. Other wishy-washy worldbuilding aspects.

In general, I think Natasha Pulley’s writing lends itself better to real world fiction, or rather, fiction based in a setting she doesn’t have to make up so much. Where there’s some grounding in what we (and she) already know(s). A lot of the worldbuilding in this one felt somewhat flimsy, included because why not!, rather than because it made sense or added to the narrative.

Case in point: the talking mammoths. For some apparent reason, there are both polar bears and mammoths on Mars. And the mammoths have language! They can talk! They can offer Gale political advice! And, I KID YOU NOT, it is from these mammoths, in a single conversation, that Gale learns tolerance and acceptance (and thus uncages January).

It was at this point that I’m pretty sure I burst into hysterics and checked out of the book. The talking mammoths felt so entirely out of step with the whole rest of the story, and that they were what prompted Gale’s change of heart (not, you might think, January proving himself trustworthy (as if he should have had to, etc etc))? I give up trying to make sense of anything about this, there’s no point! The only function they appeared to serve (besides the whole teaching tolerance nonsense) was that you can point to the book and say look! It’s got talking mammoths!

“Was I just schooled about the nature of good government by a mammoth?” Gale asks. Boy, I really fucking hope not.

(It also felt like Pulley wrote the mechanical octopus into The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and has been trying to recapture that kind of effortless whimsy in her books ever since. Alas, talking mammoths are anything but effortless.)

— The characters.

Everything I have to say from here will get progressively shorter, I’m sure you’re glad to know. In fact, my comments on the characters will probably be the shortest of all. Really, what I want to say here is solely that Pulley’s characters are starting to feel incredibly samey, in particular the last three protagonists she’s written. Thaniel and Merrick are probably her most distinct of characters, followed by Joe (simply because he’s the first of the next three). Yes, they all share similarities (perhaps more than you might want for an author), but not so much as Joe, Valery and January do.

This is, likely, a disservice to Joe and The Kingdoms (which is my favourite of Pulley’s books, although I fear testing it by rereading it after this!). He is, after all, the prototype. And maybe my view of Valery and January as very similar to him is borne of the fact that The Half Life of Valery K and The Mars House are easily my least favourite Pulley books. But the fact remains that I don’t think any of the three are meaningfully distinct. Their POVs sound exactly the same — a fact which could be put down to writing style, yes — but they also feel like the same character cast in three different plots.

There’s also a pattern appearing where Pulley’s couples are made up of a big, brutish-seeming-but-actually-a-gentle-giant character, along with a smaller, frailer character (often also more womanish?? But that could be retrospective analysis from me), and a fair amount is made of their difference in size and power. Admittedly, that last part is greater here simply because the whole thing about physical power is plot-relevant (or rather, bigotry-relevant). Your mileage may vary on how much you can stand the whole size difference schtick, but with six books of couples forming this pattern, I at least am starting to feel a bit like. Ooooh-kaaaay.

— The writing.

Pulley’s writing is, as ever, lovely, and probably one of the only positive things I have to mention about this book, but even that comes with a caveat. All of Pulley’s books have this quiet kind of gentleness to them, which worked for the first four books and even with the brutality of The Kingdoms, where it felt like the contrast between that gentleness and the non-gentleness of events highlighted the latter. It has not worked well here, much like it didn’t in The Half Life of Valery K. In the latter case, it served more to feel like it was downplaying the horrors of the gulag. This was probably because Pulley was more inclined to fully describe the brutality of The Kingdoms and more likely to brush over it in The Half Life of Valery K (possibly because the romance was between a prisoner and a guard?). In The Mars House, that gentleness becomes tonally quite odd. There’s all this anti-immigrant rhetoric and discussion of disabling surgery and eugenics, and it’s all packaged up in this writing that feels like it obscures those horrors. Like I said, odd.

Of course, though, if you had full access to those horrors, if it didn’t feel like there was a blanket being placed over it all to muffle the noise, there would be no way in hell that you could root for Gale as January’s love interest.

— The what the fuck bit.

Last but not least, and really quite pertinent given that, as I’m writing this, Israeli occupation forces are in the midst of committing genocide in Gaza and every day brings with it more and more horrific war crimes by their soldiers, this book, set in the future, is doing its bit to bring that reality nearer. There are two mentions of Israel in this and, firstly, that’s two too many. One is the mention of an AI having a “wonderful, homely Israeli accent”. Which, yuck, and also you could have chosen any country in the world to make this comment, so why an illegal apartheid state, huh? (Also January is from Britain: why would he consider Israel to be “homely”??) But to make it even more egregious, with the next mention, Pulley erases Palestine in its entirety.

I stress that this book is set in the future for this very reason. In Pulley’s future, it seems that Israel has succeeded in its aim of murdering every Palestinian and wiping out their state, culture, and entire existence. There is, in here, a scene set during Christmas, in which a young Martian child reading an Earther book, asks what Bethlehem is. January has no response, so Gale cuts in to say that it’s a town in Israel.

A quick google search would tell you that Bethlehem is a town in the West Bank, a.k.a. in Occupied Palestine. Not Israel! In fact, being in the West Bank, in an area where (technically) Israelis are not permitted. So not only has Pulley chosen to normalise the existence of an illegal settler-colonial state in her future-set book, she has also chosen to entirely wipe out the land’s indigenous population. Just giving the IOF a helping hand!

So, with this comes to a close possibly the longest review I have ever written, and definitely the longest essay-type thing I have since finishing my dissertation a few years ago. If you’ve stuck with me this far, congrats! I hope I’ve not killed your enthusiasm over this one too much. If you’re skipping to the end, I offer you this TL;DR: in conclusion, fascism solved because the fascist marries someone oppressed 🫶🏻.

*This is not quite true because, reading through my notes, I found the following: chapter 20: OH MY GOD IT'S A WOMAN. She lasted for one single chapter though, so I think it barely counts.

I ever so slightly love January, and even possibly Natashe Pulley for bringing him to life.
He was the very best of us humans, warm, honest, funny, and you can imagine the twinkle in his eye.
When the book opens in a drowning London, you can almost imagine this could be our future.
Some very good food for thought on the earth strong and being naturalised on Mars.
But the joy of this book, is January, and the way he interacts with everyone and every situation.
A few things were predictable, but they didn't spoil the story.
Very very enjoyable.

Full review up on Nerds of a Feather from 4 January 2024.

This is a real departure from the type of fantasy that Pulley does best. Typically she excels at creating images and events that depend on some sort of magic, which is evoked but never fully explained. It makes for a dreamy quality to her narrative that is quite distinctive of her style.

In this book, she uses a science-fiction setting, and although she evokes otherworldliness in the same way (the floating gravity, the talking mammoths, the misty solar power collectors), she's forced by the strictures of the genre to explain that otherworldliness, and it just doesn't quite work. If Mars is desperately dry and arid, then why does raising the temperature around a solar power generator create mist? Increasing air temperature makes it dryer, not wetter. (This is why we use humidifiers in the winter to combat dry air, and why dew collects at night, when temperatures drop.) Warm air can hold *more* moisture, not less, so if anything the mist should be gathering where the air gets cold, not where it gets warm.

Likewise, the vast differences in strength caused by growing up in different gravity systems are beautifully evoked, but the Harrison-Bergeron-like solution, to put Earthstrong people in cages that increase resistance to muscle movement so they can't accidentally hurt native Martians, also seems to carry some strange magical consequences for muscle mass. Sure, if you can't accidentally punch someone with your full strength, that would work, but it seems that the cages also do things like make it difficult to survive falls that would otherwise pose no danger to Earthstrong muscles. How? Why? If your bones are so dense that the fall won't hurt you at Martian gravities, then why would that impact be more dangerous if you're wearing a cage?

There are lots of examples of this: ideas that are evocative and useful for plotting and pacing and tension and stakes, but which simply don't work if you're trying to come up with a science-fictional type solution for them. With Pulley's approach to fantasy, she can leave it in the misty background. With SF, she can't.

That said, the non-SF books worked wonderfully well. I was extremely impressed at how she manages to create a political debate that both reflects current concerns over topical issues like climate refugees and immigration, and also doesn't have a knee-jerk 'these guys are the baddies' side to it. Both sides have genuinely good points.

It's not Pulley's best work. But I devoured it in a day, and will devour her next, because even Pulley's not-best work is still good stuff.

[Thanks to Netgalley for ARC]

This book swallowed me whole and refused to let me go for 4 days. For fans of Winters orbit and Lois McMaster Bujold, this is a book about language, how new society subcultures form, gender, mammoths and space. It's fascinating - I want to live inside Natasha Pulley's brain, she has more astounding ideas than I know what to do with - and I would happily read a thousand more pages set on Mars. The incredible arranged marriage queer romance was just an added bonus. Book of the year for me.

I enjoyed the slow- burn romance and world-building in The Mars House by Natasha Pulley, a queer sci-fi.
I received a copy of this book for a free and unbiased opinion.
The worlds of a future earth devastated by climate change and the new and evolving society on Mars are beautiful and intricate in its description. The first few chapters where January lives his life in a London under water is almost poetic with boats floating under the dome of St Paul’s cathedral but the horror of this eventually sinks in- this is a dying city. This is complete contrast to the high tech world of Mars where people are physically connected to a kind of internet and can have real-life filters on their images.
January becomes a climate refugee, moving to Mars where he meets persistent discrimination and demonisation. This description again is thoughtful and descriptive mirroring what we read about today. The fact the only way he can avoid undergoing a painful, physical transformation to survive on Mars is to agree to an arranged marriage with the person who ruined his life is horrifying.
But the slow friendship and romance that blossoms between these two very different people is the heart of this book but there is also an underlying mystery, What did Aubrey do to River, his brother? How can Aubrey be so kind and nice and then insist people from Earth are dangerous?

The story and plot move gently, and I loved the writing with it’s gentle humour and there were times I wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on particularly when the pollical shenanigans between Aubrey and his rival came into play. But the action soon picks up with unsuspected reveals and an explosive and satisfying finish.

Don't really know how to give a numerical rating for this. Had the below not been so jarring to read, could have been in the 4-5 range.

Natasha Pulley is - now could be 'was' - one of my favorite authors. I want to love this book, this was my most anticipated read for 2024 and it's full of all my favorite aspects of Pulley's writing since reading Watchmaker and every other book she released. But two references in this have me considering getting rid of my collection of her books. I was very close to DNFing.

I would hope that these were written out of ignorance considering the time frame between writing / edits and proofs being made / publication and how lacking in knowledge people may have been before recent events. I hope that these two parts will be edited out, and/or in the case of one mention, corrected.

The first: 'a wonderful homely Israeli accent', really? Of all the accents and places? And and January being happy about the connection. Why?

The second: Bethlehem is not a city in Israel, it's a city in Palestine.

I would like to be able to give the benefit of the doubt and if circumstances have changed, will amend my review.

The Mars House is a literary sci-fi queer romance novel about a Mars colony and the unlikely fake marriage between a refugee from Earth and a politician from Mars. January was a principle ballerina in London, but when London flooded he was forced to Mars, to live in the colony Tharsis. There, he's an Earthstronger, seen as dangerous as they are stronger than those naturalised to Mars, and forced to work in a factory as his only option. When a politican named Aubrey Gale, who stands for forcing Earthstrongers to be surgically naturalised to protect those natural to Mars from accidents, meets January at the factory, a press junket blows up in their faces, and a plan is proposed: a five year marriage to protect January's future and secure Gale's political chances. There's politics, environmental fears, and Gale's mysterious past to contend with as the pair learn what it is like to be each other.

I don't usually enjoy sci-fi books, but I was intrigued but the premise of this one (I've never seen a political sci-fi book that uses the romance 'fake marriage' trope before) and I'd heard of the author, though only read one of Pulley's books before. What I found was a book packed with ideas, from the abolishment of gender to the primacy of Mandarin as a language (and its morphing into a new Mars dialect), and not bogged down by some of the things I don't enjoy about sci-fi, like too much dry explanation and terminology. The writing felt playful, maybe because Pulley has moved from historical fiction to sci-fi so the genre was less solid, and the slow burn elements, particularly romance, meant that even though it was long, it was also gripping, creating plenty of tension around what would happen to the characters.

The plot itself was pretty straightforward, with the main twist being very easily guessable because it is quite heavily foreshadowed (and it was the kind of plot line that does frustrate me, without wanting to go into any spoilers), but there's still a lot going on, and a focus on characters and particularly January's experiences. Most of the book is focused on January, occasionally showing things from the perspective of someone else, and this gives it a particular slant, guiding the reader through things on Mars from the point of view of an outsider. This is a notable choice because a lot of the book is about perspective and morality, and the difficulty of making both big and small decisions when there are so many consequences and potential for people to be hurt. I liked how much the book engaged with these big ideas about morality and the complexity of the two main characters in arguing about it.

The relationship element is likely to be quite love/hate for people, because on the one hand you have a classic fake marriage scenario in which the two characters hate each other, or at least fear what each other believes, and then they have to learn to understand the bigger picture, but on the other hand, one of them does believe the other should be physically harmed in a process to make them no longer different to the "citizens" of the colony, and that seems like quite a hurdle to get over. Their characterisation does make this developing relationship believable, but there's also a lot of unanswered elements, including the fact that both of them seem to have issues around relationships and romance that never get resolved or really addressed. The book almost needs a sequel to make it believable that they have a future.

One major part of the book that made it quite stressful to read was the choice to make the naturalised-to-Mars people all agender or something similar, with gendered terms and pronouns only used for Earthstrongers and animals. As a non-binary person, it is hard not to try and read into what the author is saying about the construction of gender in the novel, which is quite messy (as gender is) and doesn't always have the space to explore the implications of this system. Especially earlier on in the novel, there can feel like a sense that the removal of binary gender is framed as a bad thing done in an effort to remove inequality, and though there are some moments that explore the implications of this, there were things that felt like they boiled down to 'people just need to know what body parts someone has or they won't be comfortable' without delving into it. One thing that would've been interesting to address would be the implications for someone who was trans to come to Mars and be naturalised (maybe even in one of the book's many footnotes if not in the narrative), but the book didn't really discuss being queer or trans on Earth at all. There was also not much really about sexuality and romance in Tharsis, despite romance being central to the plot, as far as I remember.

In short, I enjoyed reading The Mars House and I liked the two main characters and the way in which their disagreements were about big questions of morality and society rather than some random grudge, but I also felt conflicted reading it at times due to the way in which it handled some of the big questions and ideas within it, flattening interesting messiness.

Natasha Pulley books are an auto-buy/auto-read for me. I wasn't put off that it was sci-fi as I knew that it would be well-written. It was a complex, slow-burn and there were parts that I didn't quite follow but some of these were explained in later chapters. However, if was by another author, I would have perhaps skipped over it but I am here to support whatever the author writes as it is always excellent. So, if you want a sci-fi/political novel then give this a go. For Pulley fans, do read the footnotes as there is a mention of watches/Filigree Street.

I loved The Mars House!
I had never heard of this book or author before but I had to request to read it when I saw what it was about and I'm so happy I did!
I'm also definitely going to be checking out more of Natasha Pulleys work.

Everything about this book was so good!
I loved the characters so much, the story was amazing and the writing was really good.
It's definitely become a new favourite!

I definitely highly recommend this book!
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a review.

Rescued from a now underwater London, January is offered refuse on Mars. The gravity there means that he is much stronger than the locals and best suited to factory work. It’s a long way from the glamour of the London stage, but at least it’s a living. That is until he says the wrong thing to the wrong person and his second chance is yanked out from under him. Could he possibly be lucky enough to get a third?

As usual, Natasha Pulley has pulled an absolute success from the depths of her wondrous imagination. She has managed to build a whole new culture, with a whole new set rules, whilst still keeping her characters impressively relatable. And what characters they are: no stereotypes welcome here! January is a conflicting character with both soft and hard edges to him. He can give and take an insult as easily as anyone, yet is the first to step in whenever he senses even a hint of vulnerability in someone else. What is most impressive is the adaptability that both Gale and January portray, both able to meld completely into new situations without ever losing their own identities.

For the first few chapters I wasn’t really sure where the plot was going to go. However, this didn’t stop me from being fully engaged with every page. In fact it actually added to my enjoyment, letting me immerse myself in this new world without any pressures of an intense plot. By the time the main angles of the plot did begin to appear, I was fully invested in the characters: they could have done anything and I would have loved them for it. Fortunately, what they did do was fully loveable in its own right. Throughout, this book kept me enraptured with its intoxicating mix of political intrigue, mystery, romance, betrayal, and different people pulling together in hard times.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the review copy. What I liked most about this was the immersive worldbuilding, you really did get a sense of how different Tharsis is to Earth, and I did like how it explored some very complex issues. The segments with the Mammoths were also magical. However, there is some very bad science in this book (it is not possible, nor will it ever be possible, to delete cancer from the genome). I am also not a fan of the open ending style but that is a personal reading preference. But, overall I did enjoy this. I think it would appeal to fans of Winter's Orbit.

My problem with Natasha Pulley is that I don’t really want to have a problem with Natasha Pulley. But I went from being enamored with Watchmaker to being bitterly disappointed by Valery K, which now means every new book of hers I choose to read I would do cautiously. That is to say, for better or worse The Mars House had a lot to prove.

It turned out to be a strangely unrelatable book for me, even though I loved parts of its world building, particularly the sci-fi elements and linguistics-related aspects (to give a simple illustration, Mandarin acquiring new meanings because it’s being used in space and a completely different environment is such a neat and reasonable idea). Maybe it was the characters: January exhibits signs of anxiety but also seems to let go of it quickly in some cases and it reads like it’s just a sign of true love; and Gale is portrayed as this perfect shiny enigma most of the time - mild spoilers - even though his identity is telegraphed loud and clear way before the reveal.

Maybe it was the story itself: for example, it just doesn’t track for me that January, being a principal at the Royal Ballet, had absolutely no other choice but to leave for Mars. As a public figure and someone who rubbed shoulders with the elite at the best parties, wouldn’t he be taken in by literally any country that was still functioning on Earth, visa/citizenship rules and restrictions be damned? Admittedly, it might’ve proven to be a short-term solution but less daunting surely than going to space and adjusting to a completely new environment where you know you’d be robbed of the profession you adore. I’m not sure I’m fully on board with how politics was handled either, and, just like one of the twists mentioned earlier, the bulk of the mystery was easy to predict. The romance mostly left me indifferent, and if I cared a little more, I would probably stress that agency could be a big problem when your life literally depends on the person you agreed to marry and publicly support as an alternative to possibly physically maiming yourself forever.

Overall, it was nice to see Natasha Pulley branching out into what is more of a sci-fi direction, and some of it I unreservedly enjoyed. Some ideas and turns of phrase were truly lovely (‘my Apollo/my Artemis’ sounds simply marvelous), but some lost their appeal because of my somewhat lacking investment in the larger context they were in and the story itself

This was my first book by Natasha Pulley, I did feel out of my depth at first but I fell in love with the universe of the book and would read more by Natasha in the future.

Fanfic writing and literary teamed up for The Mars House where politics and fake marriage from Winter’s Orbit meet the warning about our current world from To Paradise.
 
Imagine. A flooded London. The Chinese saving the British. Saudi Arabia turning back refugee boats from the UK. A Chinese colony on Mars. Special train carriages, special houses, special entrances, and so on for so-called Earthstrongers (people from Earth). Forcing people to change because of how they’re born. Gender Abolition. Imagine. And think. 

Natasha Pulley’s writing is always elusive. Not much seems to be happening, and still, you feel the uneasiness below the surface in every word and every sentence. You’re waiting to peel off layer by layer, to find snippets of information to help you lose that turmoil in your body, but instead, your radar starts whirling, and you might think you’re going mad. As a reader, it makes you extremely frantic because what if you’re missing something essential? So, The Mars House started in slow motion, with numerous footnotes, and it made me read even more slowly. And at the same time, the story gripped me because I instantly felt the social importance of this book. It’s an apparent reference to the world we’re living in right now, with climate change and populism and excluding others.
 
There’s always a slow-slow-slow-burn love story in Natasha’s novels between two traumatized people. The fake marriage between January and Gale is no different. Starting as magnets with their repelling poles pointed at each other—January hates everything Gale thinks, and Gale hates everything January is—eventually, they start teasing and grinning and suddenly having rather normal conversations. Everything seems to be fine (except for Gale’s political positions), and even I, a huge Natasha Pulley fan, started to wonder if this book would be anything like her other books. But my heart opened up for Gale and January, oh sweet January, and warmth slid inside my body, and small smiles tilted up my lips while, at other times, chills started to creep up my arms, and I was reading faster and faster, and ... About halfway through the novel, I had an inkling and … sorry, I’m saying no more. Only … mammoths (movie-like!)… and know my inkling was correct!

If you haven’t read anything by Natasha Pulley yet, I’m not sure if you should start with this one. On the other hand, none of them might seem to be the best to begin with. They all give you doubt and confusion and furrowed brows. The most important thing is to just surrender to her storytelling and not quit when you feel bored or utterly confused. The pacing in her books is slow, especially in the first part, but eventually, the story will unfold itself, and suddenly you understand why so many readers are Natasha Pulley stans! 
 
And now I want that sequel to Valery K Natasha was talking about on Twitter! Publishers, do you hear me? US READERS NEED THAT SEQUEL DESPERATELY!!

Actual rating 4.5 stars rounded up to five.

Thank you to Orion and Netgalley for the chance to read this. First of all, I am a Natasha Pulley fan. I’ve read all their books and adored many of her characters. Even though this one is set in the future, it is still solidly one of their books - the writing is beautiful, crisp and precise, the characters bleed off the pages and into the reader’s mind (and heart).

Here there lies an epic slo-burn romance, political shenanigans, hideous bigotry and a convoluted plot that touches on so many issues that beleaguer our current world - all done without any ranting or raging. I could have done without one flashback, as I thought it unnecessary, but otherwise I was utterly engaged. I loved the dance, the Houses, the angst, the mammoths (❤️) and most of all, damaged January, who deserves happiness.