THE MARS HOUSE

Boy meets billionaire (on Mars)

RELEASED OUT NOW!

480 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook

Author Natasha Pulley

Publisher Gollancz

The Mars House arrives in UK bookshops with a point to prove. The author took to Twitter last year after her regular publisher rejected the manuscript and her agent struggled to sell it elsewhere. A bidding war ensued, and now here it is. Does it live up to the fuss? Well, sort of.

Royal Opera ballet dancer January Stirling flees a flooded future London for Mars. Though partially terraformed, Mars is not a welcoming place. As well as facing extreme cold and low oxygen, “Earthstrong” newcomers must wear metal cages to offset their higher weight and strength compared with “Naturals”, people who have been on Mars for generations and are genetically adapted to the low-gravity environment.

After a chance encounter with wealthy anti-earthstrong politician Aubrey Gale goes wrong – January makes a joking death threat on live television, as you do – he’s sentenced to prison. With his only options freezing to death (no one will give him a job after imprisonment) or undergoing “naturalisation” (life-shortening mutilation designed to assimilate Earthstrong into Natural society), January accepts Aubrey’s offer of a political marriage.

Er, what? Fake marriages are a well-worn and much-loved romance trope: unlikely pairing forced together, growing and undeniable attraction, happily ever after, etc. But in this case, it’s rather like being asked to root for a romance between Nigel Farage and a Syrian refugee.

Aubrey backs mandatory naturalisation of all Earthstrong, and plans to send ships of climate refugees back out into space. But the story sweeps all objections aside in a quest to make them a charming-but-fragile love interest.

The physical challenges of life on Mars are interestingly explored, and there are some excellent bits involving talking mammoths, but the parallels with the present overpower the story, the plotting hinges on selective stupidity in January, and the glib, cutesy tone sits uncomfortably with the grim themes. Nic Clarke

Pulley will be signing in Bath, Edinburgh, Swansea, Liverpool and London this month. See natashapulley.co.uk/events.