Title: The Blue Hearts of Mars
Author: Nicole Grotepas
Series: standalone
Age Category: Young adult, age 12-16
Published by:Â 11th January 2013, self-published
Pages: 268Â p.
Genre:Â Science fiction, Androids, dystopia, romance
About The Blue Hearts of Mars
Retta lives on Mars under a dome, is about to graduate high school, and has a side job in a coffee shop. This is where she first meets Hemingway. She falls in love with him, but their love is forbidden.
Hemingway is an android, bound to be a slave of the system, where androids are seen as lesser beings by humans. He can not resist Retta, and together they embark on an adventure to change the world. Along the way, they discover secrets that the government has kept since they first settled on Mars.
My opinion about The Blue Hearts of Mars
Warning: this review contains spoilers for the book.
I was thinking of doing a spoiler-free review of this book, but instead, I will do a deep dive. The reason for this is that I have so many issues with the book and I want to discuss them with you because I feel that we can also learn something from this.
Let me start with the positive parts, the setting was different from anything I have read before. I do not tend to read books set in space, because I thought that wouldn't be for me. This book does prove that this part of science fiction can be interesting to read. I liked that this was set on Mars and that humans managed to colonize space. This is something that I think is something that we would love to do. Inhabit a new planet. In this book, the people have been living on Mars for many generations. Space travel is possible, there are people that vacation in other parts of the galaxy for example. The first settlers created the androids that then built domes so that human life would be possible. The first settlers brought materials and plant life with them from Earth, and for many generations, they have been trying to recreate a resemblance to Earth.
I liked the world that the author created. There are various domes on Mars, and our main character Retta lives in New Helsinki. When I started this book, the prologue sounded promising, I thought that it would be a dual POV. I soon found that the only chapter written from Hemingway's perspective was the prologue. I think this was a missed opportunity to make the book better than it turned out to be. An inside in Hemingway's mind might have filled up the gaps and question marks I was having pretty much from chapter one.
The first thing that struck me as strange is that a lot of things were glossed over, for example, Retta meets Hemingway they talk. The next moment they are dating, without us ever getting any conversations, meet-ups, or even a time frame of how long ago that first meeting was in the coffee shop. The story dives right into Retta being head over heels by a character that we as the audience do not have a connection with. This made it very hard for me to wrap my head around and continue with the book. Retta is supposedly almost 18, but the way she sounds is more the equivalent of age 14 to 16. I still do not understand even after finishing the book how this love story came to be, if there could have been a couple of chapters of them just getting together, going on dates, learning about other characters, and finding out that he is an android. All this is just non-existent and that is very sad.
There was also a lot of repetition in those first chapters, not only in the "OMG he is so beautiful" department but also there are a couple of cases when things in the world are explained to the reader twice. The world-building was in this case not very subtle, it is often Retta addressing the reader almost directly instead of us finding out the information through situations like for example; reading along with a study book, or a teacher explaining the history to students in class. It needed more show than tell.
In all honesty, I almost DNF'ed this book, the issues I was having with it kept piling up the further I got. I am sorry that this will not be a glowing review, it cannot always be a 5-star read, unfortunately. I feel that it is important to show my readers that I will give my honest opinion in I hope a well-versed way so that we can learn from these situations and help make books better. I know that this may sound like a harsh critique of the book, but I feel it is necessary to address the issues.
Another major issue I had with this book is that there are time gaps between the chapters, I hinted at this at the beginning of my reviews and I want to explain further to you what I mean by those time gaps by giving an example. This will be a spoiler for the book, so in case you do plan on reading this it might be wise to skip ahead to the next paragraph. After Retta breaks into Syntech, the company that makes the androids, she finally tells Hemingway what she and Mei found, a document that says all androids will be deployed to a new planet, without their consent. Retta and Hemingway try to run away then without any preparation, and only the clothes on their back. Before they leave, they want to go find the Voice, which is the guy leading a resistance, to inform him about the android deployment. This whole meeting is skipped over, we only hear the events as an afterthought. Finally, something interesting could happen, and we do not get to see it play out at all.
There were many moments like this throughout the book, and it made it hard to follow along with the story. These are the details you would want to go into detail on, these are the parts that give the story depth, excitement, and memorable. And yet they were ignored, I was a little disappointed by it.
The last thing I would point out is that there are a lot of things that are not explained. Why can they just break into high-tech facilities without getting caught, why is there no security system? Why are they not arrested as soon as they come from the train when Retta was on the news and wanted by Syntec. These are only a few of my questions, there is a lot that makes no sense at all, it gets to the point that the story becomes very unbelievable.
Rating The Blue Hearts of Mars
Unfortunately, there were too many issues with this book, that could not be ignored. The idea of living on Mars, the androids, and humans living there together is great. I just wish it had much more depth. The execution of the idea was lacking overall. There were so many plot holes that it left me with too many questions at the end of the book. The characters did not have much depth, the love story was instant. Due to the many issues this book has my rating will not be higher than 2 cats, these are solely giving because I do like the idea of the story.
Comentários