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ClareR (6256 KP) rated The Mars House in Books

Oct 1, 2024

The Mars House

Natasha Pulley | 2024 | Science Fiction/Fantasy

9.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

Can I just say that I loved a book and leave it at that? Because this is one of those books.
Ok, a short summary:
January Sterling is a climate refugee, escaping the floods and intense heat for the Mars colony of Tharsis. Life as an Earthstronger on Mars isn’t ideal. He and the other Earthstrongers are seen as a danger to the native Martians: they are much stronger because of the weaker gravity, even though they’re much smaller. January and his fellow Earthstrongers are discriminated against and given the worst manual labour jobs.

January meets a Martian politician who is staunchly anti-Earth stronger, an somehow ends up in a sham-marriage. Of course, it’s a slow-burn romance with lots of peril, lies and climate change politics.

My only complaint, is that in trying to make the characters asexual, they all read as being very male. Perhaps it was just the way I read it.

The Mars House has a lot to say about climate change and its refugees - and the predictable refugee-haters. Instead of boats, they arrive in space ships, and the inhabitants of Mars are as scared of, and enraged by, these people, as some elements in our own society today.

I really enjoyed this book, and I loved how different it was to Natasha Pulley’s previous books. Whatever will she write next? I’ll be waiting!

Kudos

Hazel (2934 KP) rated The Daughter of Auschwitz in Books

Oct 1, 2022

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” ELIE WIESEL

This is an extremely hard book to read but one I feel necessary so the past is not forgotten.

Tova was born just prior to the start of World War II; her earliest memories being of living in the ghetto her family and parents were sent to by the Nazi's. From the ghetto, she and her parents are sent to a labour camp; Tova is 5 years old. At the age of 6, Tova and her mum are separated from her dad for the first time as they are placed in different cattle cars and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Tova describes her experiences from the eyes of an innocent child trying to make sense of the horrors she hears and witnesses every day. How someone, let alone a child, can survive what went on in that hell and come out the other side and live even close to a 'normal' life is beyond me. It is testament to the strength of her mother and the lessons she taught Tova that she survived and became the woman she did.

Many thanks to Quercus Books and NetGalley for enabling me to read and share my thoughts of this powerful, heart-breaking but uplifting book. This should be required reading for all school children and adults alike.