Michelle Herbert reviews Before Mars by Emma Newman…
Before Mars is the third novel in the Planetfall Series, this book is set almost concurrently with the events of After Atlas. I don’t think it will matter if you read either After Atlas before or after Before Mars as they are very different stories, but I am glad I read these books in the order they were published. My review of After Atlas can be found here.
As suggested by the title, this book is set on the mainly uninhabited Mars. There is a base called Mars Principia, owned by GaborCorp. The base has been built and is inhabited by a team of scientists to study the effects of Mars and to see if the planet can be made habitable. We meet the main character Anna as she is about to arrive on Mars after six months alone in space. She has left her husband and daughter on Earth and is feeling sick for being in such a confined space for so long. When she first arrives she meets Dr Anolfi the base’s psychologist, who Anna instantly distrusts although she doesn’t understand why she feels this way, it is soon backed up by a note she finds in her newly assigned room.
From that moment there are a number of weird things that Anna notices around the base. As Anna meets her new colleagues, she is confused by the over-familiarity she feels towards them, as well as her feelings that she has been on the base before. This is put down to Anna spending too much time in immersions, but she can’t shake the feeling that there is something wrong here and is worried that her past may also be catching up with her. This is a great set up as the book revolves around whether Anna is deeply paranoid, or if there really is a conspiracy on the base that she has stumbled into and if so can she trust any of her new colleagues. Or even worse, that Anna is just in a simulation and that she doesn’t realise that what she is experiencing isn’t real at all.
As mentioned there is some crossover between some of the minor characters in After Atlas, and it was interesting to read how they connected to the characters in Before Mars. This also links into if you have read After Atlas how closely these books timelines match up and actually makes the events of Before Mars more brutal in their execution in some cases, but also lessened the impact for others, I won’t go further into this to avoid spoilers for both books, but both stories are uniquely told and never become repetitive.
I found Before Mars to be stunningly heartbreaking, there are lots of twists and reveals throughout the book. Anna is an interesting character who flicks between knowing that she is happy that she made the choice to come to Mars, but also feels some guilt towards leaving her family behind, which became an absorbing take on motherhood and postnatal depression. Emma Newman’s Planetfall series does have a recurring theme; that of parents leaving their children behind and vice versa. The series is well written so that although many of the characters have abandonment issues or feelings of guilt, it always feels varied. Which allows these characters to be more natural in how they deal with their thoughts and emotions in a society that is surrounded by and deeply in thrall to surveillance and knowing as much as possible about everyone. As a series, there is nothing quite like it and I really hope that there are more books to come.
Michelle Herbert
