Alphane Moon's Journal

a mars novel, sort of
A couple of weeks ago I finished Kim Stanley Robinson's Icehenge, which I've hitherto missed, and which was billed as the first of his Martian novels. Like I've said, I always take something away from his books, even ones I don't consider particularly good; this one was all right, not much more, but not long enough to try one's patience. Many things which seized my interest were just left hanging-- and not in an exciting and edgy literary way, either; they were just undeveloped, or cut off. Not that I was too surprised: one of the reviews on the back said something like "In a genre not noted for complex and interesting characters blah blah blah..."-- you always know if the character development is praised, the plot is going to be weighed in the balance and found wanting.

But it was a nice addition to his settlement-of-the-solar-system novels, and held up pretty well, except for an awful lot of references to things like xeroxing huge paper manuscripts on an asteroid, or playing cassette tapes, which dated it a little...