Ares Express Book

Desolation Road was epic. Not perfect, but very good, an exhausting but fascinating read. This one, its sort of kind of sequel, was just exhausting. Naturally, having read Desolation Road and being so in awe of McDonald's world building, his manformed (terraformed) Mars seems like a place worth a revisit. Sometimes a sequel is just as good as the original, sometimes it's inferior, but still quite good. This one wasn't even in the same ballpark, the apple rolled so far from the tree, it became an entirely different infinitely less appetizing fruit. In fact the striking difference in quality is about the most interesting thing about this book. I mean, it's still recognizably McDonald's writing, with his fairy tale spinning style and vividly (occasionally excessively so) descriptive imagery, but the rest...the story (of a young woman fleeing an arranged marriage to become enmeshed in planetary politics and her grandmother in pursuit) wasn't even slightly compelling, the characters neither likeable nor engaging. The book was dramatically overwritten, dizzyingly confusing, with cheap saves of an and then they woke up variety, loopy and seldom exciting. The connections to the far superior original were so tangential, it might have been a stand alone. Usually it pays to read the sequel shortly after the original while the names and places are fresh in mind, but in this case it didn't matter almost at all. Why this wild departure, why this stupendously unnecessary sequel...no idea, but it was a tiring and tiresome read, undertaken on a premise of the original and finished only due to my completist nature. It isn't without some inspired moments, but never enough to offset the bulk of the narrative. Glad to have tried the author first on his greater work, this one would not have invited a second try. Frustrating, disappointing and ultimately a waste of time (and quite a lot of time too). Desolation Road universe should have been left alone to wow, undiluted and proud. Pass.