Quick Synopsis – January, once a principal in London’s Royal Ballet, has become a refugee on Tharsis, the terraformed colony on Mars. He is defined as his status as an Earthstronger, a person on Mars with 3x the strength of a naturalized Mars citizen. After a political visit goes awry, January finds himself thrust into a political marriage with Aubrey Gail – the very person trying to enact laws that would force refugees to naturalize. Natasha Pulley’s new novel is a gripping story about privilege, strength, and life across class divisions

Song This Reminds Me Of – Drops of Jupiter by Train

Publication Date – March 19, 2024

Rating – 3 out of 5 ⭐

Content Warnings – This novel is fairly political in nature and involves a lot of discussions of war and genocide. There are also some plot points around religion and gender. One of the main characters is the victim of a violent crime off-page, and as a result, they are an amputee. Forced medical procedures on refugees are a main topic of this novel.

Review – I really hope gays in space are becoming a new sub-genre because I could definitely get behind that. I loved the bones of this story and found the politics to be incredibly relevant. This book was too slow for me, though. It took me three days to get through the first 30% and one day to finish it. Once I got past that first third, I could just plow right through, but the first part was dull and repetitive.

I also had a major issue with footnotes. I find this is a problem a lot when you’re using an e-reader. Several times the footnote wouldn’t continue until pages later, often with red text just interrupting the flow of the story. Also, the footnotes weren’t at the bottom or top of the page, but either randomly in the middle of pages or at the end of chapters. I know this isn’t an author issue, but a publisher problem. It was still incredibly annoying.

The main part of the story is like West Side Story. January, the immigrant, is trying to make the best of a bad situation. He’s expected to not only be grateful to live in a literal body-cage most of the time but also know at least three different languages while living at the bottom of society. Of course, he has anger towards the naturalized citizens of Mars. These naturalized citizens are often people whose families have lived on Mars for generations, and as such, their bodies have better adjusted to the low gravity, and they’ve developed their own language, a sort of modified Mandarin.

After a political snafu lands January in prison and then in an arranged marriage with the very Senator he managed to offend. And the last consort of this particular Senator “ran away”. January is sucked into a world of unimaginable wealth and also ignorance of how the Earth strong population lives. The dichotomy of January and Gale was one of my favorite parts of this book. It’s not often we see the strong, white, male be the refugee. The political plot of this book is honestly what kept me reading.

There are some twists and turns that make this an interesting read, but the slow start and somewhat obvious plot points made it drag for me.

Thanks to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for this ARC.