Lost On Mars

Is there life on Mars? ( Yep)

Release Date: 14 May

352 pages | Paperback Author: Paul Magrs Publisher: Firefly Press

Those intrepid souls

who’ve signed up to establish a colony on Mars might think twice after reading this vivid tale of hardy frontier folk struggling to survive on the inhospitable prairies of the Red Planet.

Regular Doctor Who novelist Paul Magrs has been guilty of overdoing the whimsy in the past. Here, he dials that right down in favour of a convincing exercise in world- building – albeit one with a walking, talking sunbed and the occasional line like, “It was late in our Martian autumn when we were allowed to hold the funeral for Grandma’s leg.”

After a gritty start, the book – aimed at teens, but with obvious crossover appeal – shifts gear into quest territory before opening out into something far more wondrous, strange and satisfying. Paul Kirkley