Review: Martians Abroad

Martians Abroad Martians Abroad by Carrie Vaughn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received an eARC of this novel from the publisher though NetGalley.

I love Carrie Vaughn’s books, and I jumped at the opportunity to read this book early. As with her Kitty Norville stories, Vaughn gives us a first-person narrative with a very comfortable and conversational tone. You can’t help but love her protagonists, in this case a teenage Martian girl named Polly Newton.

Polly learns that she’s been chosen to attend the Galileo Academy on Earth, and she’s not too happy about it. She’s perfectly content at her home of Colony One, on Mars. She’s going with her twin brother Charles, and that only makes it worse because he’s so agreeable to the proposition.
This really felt like a YA take on The Expanse, that great series by Vaughn’s friend(s) James S.A. Corey. It doesn’t have the gritty feel of that other universe, but it does seem to have a similar society and political structure. That’s certainly not a complaint, but I do wonder if there was any influence here.

My only real criticism of the book is that it ended rather abruptly. Not cliffhangery abrupt, as it had a satisfying ending, but I do feel it could have been fleshed out a little more and maybe expanded by 50 pages or so without losing anything. I did get the feeling that we’ll be seeing a series here eventually, and if so I’ll definitely be checking in on Polly Newton again.


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