I love this series. So much. Each installment feels complete in it's own right, but we're putting together a cohesive single narrative as well that I assume Atlas Alone will delve more deeply into. The thing I love the most about these books is how much of a punch is packed into a relatively short novel. What other writers would take 500+ pages to do, Emma Newman accomplishes in less. The world feels fully developed and believable, the characters demand that you care about them, and the mystery is woven into it all in a really readable way. I love recommending this series to readers who don't usually read sci-fi as I think it's a great entry point.

Not my favorite of the series. We spend too much time in Anna Kubrin's head as she arrives on Mars and deals with her complicated family issues. The ending was not much of a surprise if you have read the previous novels, but at least the plot picked up a bit. I will read the next in the series in order to see where it all ends.

This is the third book in a series but stood alone reasonably well. Ann has gone on a major mission, and she's not in top condition. They must have missed that part, this woman is in agony from postpartum depression that she's questioning everything. I do mean everything, her husband, her mission, her entire life. She has dual missions on Mars, as both a geologist and an artist. She's trying to get out of her own issue and mesh more with the crew, but she's getting crazy messages in her own writing and now she's not sure if she has snapped, or been set up, or what is happening. I liked the mystery and the suspense, the setting and the "world" were just fine. What I wasn't thrilled about was the ending. Everything else worked pretty well.

My copy came from Net Galley. My thoughts and opinions are my own. This review is left of my own free volition.

Published by Ace on April 17, 2018

Before Mars is the third book in Emma Newman’s Planetfall series, but it can easily be read as a standalone. The series adopts the common science fiction background of governments that have merged with large corporations (gov-corps), a logical extension of our current reality. Citizen-employees are assigned jobs and living quarters by a gov-corp. On a positive note, the gov-corps have dialed back some of the religious right’s influence on government, because (as the gov-corps see it) narrow-mindedness does nothing to advance profits. On the other hand, such human rights as people have are guaranteed only by their employment contracts.

Anna Kubrin is a geologist but she is also an artist. One of the gov-corps, GaborCorp, has exclusive rights to Mars, where it films a popular television show. Gabor thinks Martian landscapes will be a good investment, so it sends Anna to Mars.

Anna doesn’t much mind going, although it means leaving behind her husband and daughter. Anna’s husband was never right for her, so she isn’t likely to miss him. Anna is ashamed to admit to herself that babies are frightening, small children are boring, and she is too selfish to be a fully involved mother. So she might miss her daughter a bit, but she knows that when she returns to Earth, she’ll give her daughter a hug before moving on to something more intellectually stimulating. I’m glad my mother wasn’t like Anna, but I appreciate her honesty. And I appreciate Newman’s development of a complex character who might not be particularly likable, but whose introspection and self-criticism allow the reader to understand her and perhaps to sympathize with her situation.

Some of the other scientists (slash television stars) on Mars are less sympathetic than Anna. In particular, Arnolfi, the GaborCorp neurophysiologist and psychiatrist who assesses her, believes she is suffering from a form of psychosis that is triggered by the immersions (virtual realities) in which people live as they make the long journey to Mars. When Anna arrives and unpacks, she finds a note that tells her not to trust Arnolfi, but the reader feels that distrust instinctively.

Anna recognizes the painted note as her own style, but she doesn’t recall painting it. Then she notices that some of the art supplies she packed didn’t make it to Mars, and that the wedding ring she packed is missing the engraving it once had. Later she finds a footprint in a part of Mars where nobody has ever walked (or so the AI tells her). Perhaps her brain implant is messing with her. As Anna and science fiction fans know, a brain implant should never be trusted. Another other option is that she’s gone mad, which is part of her family history and therefore Anna’s greatest fear. About a third of the way through the novel, as Anna is playing an immersion, she discovers that she is not alone in thinking that something is very wrong on GaborCorp’s Mars.

Before Mars is a science fiction mystery that asks the reader to join Anna in getting to the bottom of an apparent conspiracy, perhaps orchestrated by the AI, to keep Anna in the dark about certain events that are happening, or previously happened, on Mars. The plot is carefully structured, internally consistent, and intelligent. The ending ties together all the clues in a way that is credible and poignant. Before Mars offers a careful balance of plot and characterization. I don’t know if Anna will return in a future Planetfall installment, but I would like to know what happens to her next — and caring about what will happen to a character is a good sign that the novel in which she appears made an emotional impact.

RECOMMENDED

The latest in the Planetfall series. An artist/geologist is new to Mars and the rest of the crew just can't accept her. This can be enjoyed by those who haven't read After Atlas, but those who have will experience a different layer of the story.
https://multcolib.bibliocommons.com/item/show/3903865068 (review in 'Favorite 2018 books, so far from Multcolib My Librarian Rachael' list)

Emma Newman’s "Before Mars" is the third book in her Planetfall series but the first that I have read. Did I do that wrong? Who knows. I think it’s a prequel, and I have mixed feelings about reading prequels before the main story arc of a series, when they were written afterward. (Here’s looking at you, "The Magician’s Nephew.") In fact, "Before Mars" marks the completion of a triptych of Newman’s own making, all of them unspooling around one central event: the departure of the spaceship Atlas from Earth. The first book in the series deals with those who went, the second book deals with those who stayed behind, and the third book ("Before Mars") deals with those who made it all possible, who in fact went partway, but who ultimately fell short of the stars. Can you tell I’ve spent much time perusing the descriptions of these other two books? Yeah, I’ll be adding them to my to-read list. My … endless … to-read list.

"Before Mars" is something of a slow burn. It doesn’t start with a criminal act; it opens with Mars getting a new artist-in-residence, a geologist with a whole lot of secrets, some of which she seems to be keeping from herself. There’s more of the psychological thriller angle to this book than the others, but even so it becomes rapidly clear that something is indeed very wrong with herself, with the other Martian scientists, with the AI who runs their habitat systems, and with all of their memories. Newman has clearly read Gillian Flynn as well as Dashiell Hammett, and taken the “untrustworthy narrator” trope to heart. In a good way. That is, in a way that she makes count by the end, and rewarding the reader’s trust in the printed page to justify its inclusion. All the same, "Before Mars" rapidly escalates from subtle psychological thriller to full-blown whodunit, and our intrepid geologist-artist dishes equally as much of the accurate scientific minutiae as does Morden and Weir, only well-meshed in moments of real character development or the occasional scenic passage. There are very few infodumps to be found here, and in my mind that’s a mark in Newman’s favor.

Also, I’m a sucker for artists-in-residence on Mars. I’m pretty sure that was in my Twitter bio for a couple of years: “First writer-in-residence on Mars!” I was very enthusiastic, if you can tell, and also in recovery from my MFA.

There’s a mystery to be uncovered in "Before Mars," and if you’ve already read the first two books in the series you’ll know what that secret is. If you haven’t, and you’re like me, you’ll find the eventual denouement pleasingly strange and unexpected, and just the sort of conclusion to whet your appetite for reading more.

I literally can’t wait for the next book in this series and it’s depressing that because this one just came out I’m going to have to wait at least a year or two to find out what happens and it’s killing me. These books are like genre entries in an overarching story. Planetfall was the sci-fi thriller, After Atlas was a murder mystery and Before Mars is a psychological thriller, there’s something for everyone here and the story ruminates on the price we would have to pay for the advancements we will eventually make and the morality that accompanies them. A must read for sci-fi fans!

Before Mars is a unique inquiry about the human condition. I enjoyed the space and fantasy aspects, as well as the deeply personal anecdotes but I feel as though I would have enjoyed the novel more if I had read the previous two books in the series, Worth the read, though.

My only minor issue with this book was the timing of the message at the very end when they’re deciding what to do. It just seemed too neatly convenient that she got the message while they were having their plan the future meeting. Other than that, everything about this was fantastic and tied in really great with the other two books. I love this series so so much.

"Hugo Award winner Emma Newman returns to the captivating Planetfall universe with a dark tale of a woman stationed on Mars who starts to have doubts about everything around her.

After months of travel, Anna Kubrin finally arrives on Mars for her new job as a geologist and de facto artist in residence--and already she feels she is losing the connection with her husband and baby at home on Earth.

In her room on the base, Anna finds a mysterious note, painted in her own hand, warning her not to trust the colony psychiatrist. A note she can't remember painting.

When she finds a footprint in a place that the colony AI claims has never been visited by humans, Anna begins to suspect that she is caught up in an elaborate corporate conspiracy. Or is she losing her grip on reality? Anna must find the truth, regardless of what horrors she might discover or what they might do to her mind."

Mars, it's the new thing that all books should have in them!

The nitty-gritty: Newman’s series doesn’t slow down at all in this latest installment, which combines mystery, suspense and plenty of raw emotions.

I’ve enjoyed this series so much, and it’s not over yet, thank goodness! All of Emma Newman’s Planetfall books can be read as standalones, although Before Mars does reference events in the previous books, so my recommendation would be to read them in order. I think of the first three books, Before Mars is my second favorite. (After Atlas is still my favorite and Planetfall my least favorite, although “least favorite” doesn’t mean much when the series is so good!) Once again, Newman deals with mental health in various ways—she’s tackled things such as hoarding and addiction, and this time around it's postpartum depression, although it goes much deeper than that (I’ll get more into that later). This is also a cracking mystery set in space, and Newman is brilliant at slowly revealing her mysteries, leaving the reader frantically turning pages to find out what’s really going on.

When the story opens, scientist and artist Dr. Anna Kubrin is on a ship travelling to Mars, having been hired by billionaire Stefan Gabor to paint Mars landscapes and broadcast her progress back home via a satellite TV show popular on Earth that brings the science and awe of Mars into people’s living rooms. Anna has left her husband Charlie and their young daughter Mia behind, having convinced herself that the fame and fortune of being one of the lucky few to visit Mars will ultimately help her family. When Anna finally arrives, she's greeted by the crew she’ll be spending the next six months with on Mars Principia: the base therapist, Dr. Amalfi, the medic, Dr. Elvan, Dr. Banks, the star of the TV show Anna will be joining, and another scientist named Patrenek. But right away, Anna notices some very odd things. She finds a note in her luggage, written in her own handwriting, that says DON’T TRUST AMALFI! And when she goes to put her wedding ring back on, it isn’t hers, but a replica without the personal engraving inside the band.

When she meets Dr. Banks for the first time, she’s shocked at how antagonistic he is toward her, and Dr. Amalfi is convinced that Anna is a prime candidate for something called immersion psychosis, an illness befalling people who spend too much time immersed in digitally stored memories. And even odder, Anna finds herself drawn to Dr. Elvan, who she’s never met before, although they both feel completely comfortable around each other. Anna is also dealing with guilt over leaving her family, her true feelings toward Charlie, and some difficult unresolved issues with her father. And things just aren’t adding up. Anna discovers a shocking secret, but no one will believe her. What's really going on? Anna is determined to find out, even if discovering the truth puts her in danger.

What makes this story so much fun are all the secrets the characters are trying to hide from one another, which is pretty hard to do when you live on a small base in close confines with only a few people. What makes it even harder is that the resident AI, who goes by Principia (“the Prince” for short) has access to everyone’s chips (implants that help access unlimited information, among other things) and even worse, knows exactly where everyone is at all times. When Anna makes a discovery while outside roaming the surface of the planet, she has to figure out whether to tell anyone and how to keep the information from Principia. The AI is also able to restrict access to certain areas and can even create “fake” storms to keep the crew from going where they shouldn’t be going. Newman did a great job of keeping the tension high, and she had plenty of twists that I honestly didn’t see coming. There were a couple of things that I had a hard time believing, especially when Anna, newly arrived on Mars and a civilian to boot, manages to leave the base by herself and go exploring in a Mars Rover (without so much as a driving lesson), but these events didn’t really affect my enjoyment of the story.

I’ve always loved the unique world building that Newman incorporates into this series, and Before Mars manages to bring new things to the table. I especially loved when Anna reminisces about the AI bear she had as a child, which recorded all of her childhood experiences in preparation for having a chip installed when she reached her teens. The bear reminded me so much of Teddy from the movie A.I. (one of my favorite movies!) that I almost wish it had been a bigger part of the story. I also loved little details like how the crew puts on their space suits in order to leave the base (seriously cool!), and the fact that you can go into “mersives” which are crystal clear memories of happier times.

And while all the sci-fi stuff and the mysteries are a lot of fun, at its heart this book deals with some very serious subjects. The most important one highlights Anna’s feelings about motherhood, and I can honestly say I’ve never seen postpartum depression dealt with in quite this way. She describes the way she was basically tricked by her husband into getting pregnant, her fears about becoming a mother and losing her identity as a woman, and the ultimately disappointing lack of emotion she feels when her daughter is born. Rarely do you see a story about a woman who has very little interest in becoming a mother, and not even seeing her newborn daughter brings those feelings of motherly love to the surface. I thought it was an extremely honest and brave thing to write about, and whether it’s autobiographical or not, it added a beautiful and emotional layer to the story.

Before Mars has so many layers that it’s impossible to touch on everything in this review. If you’ve read all three books, you’ll start to see the connections among them, even though the characters, locations and time frames are all different. Before Mars has a truly shocking ending, but the events at the end clearly show us where the next book is headed. There is at least one more book in the series, although it remains "untitled" on Goodreads, and I'll be waiting anxiously for the next chapter!

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.

I should have known before I started reading that Emma Newman’s Before Mars was going to leave me sleepless and unsettled. It’s the third book in her loosely connected Planetfall series, and the previous two novels, which are less prequels and more standalone novels in a shared world, each demanded to be read in a single sitting, the clock ticking through the small hours. Both Planetfall and After Atlas planted me in the heads of people trapped, whether by the legal system, by their pasts, by their crimes, or by their parents; I felt that struggling, drowning feeling to the roots of my teeth. Before Mars is equally stifling and unnerving, a futuristic mystery shot through with paranoia.

Anna Kubrick wakes up on Mars after a six month solo flight from Earth. She’s been sent by Stefan Gabor, the head of a powerful gov-corp, to his small settlement on there, ostensibly to act as a sort of artist-in-residence. Anna is a mid-level corporate geologist who dabbles in painting, and her pragmatically romantic renderings of the Martian landscape have caught the eye of Gabor’s husband, Travis. The rush to send her to Mars—which necessitates her lonely solo flight—and her shaky credentials as both a scientist and an artist undercut her position within the small community on Mars Principia before she even arrives. Personally, she’s already on shaky psychological ground, having spent more time than is healthy in ‘mersives (virtual memory simulations) on the long, lonely ride over, which can result in immersive psychosis: a paranoiac sense that no one and nothing is real.

Anna is unsettled by her first reactions to the residents of Mars Principia, and theirs to her. She takes an instant, irrational dislike to the group’s psychologist, Dr. Arnolfi, while her interactions with medical Dr. Elvan feel unnervingly intimate—they seem to share a physical comfort with one another that defies explanation. Dr. Banks, the host of a ‘mersive that details the scientific wonders of Mars (and who Anna developed a bit of a crush on during her journey) snarls at her during their first meeting. The items in her personal gear seem to have disturbed—canvasses are missing, and a wedding ring somehow no longer has an inscription on the inside of the band. She also finds a small painting, in a perfect simulacrum of her own style, that warns her not to trust Dr. Arnolfi.

Even as she experiences cracks in the surface of her reality on Mars, Anna is riven with guilt the husband and daughter she’s left behind on Earth. Her child, Mia, wasn’t much more than a year old when Anna left Earth, and they’ll be parted for two formative years. It’s hard to say whether Anna feels more guilt about leaving, or for the fact that leaving relieved her from having to fake her unfelt joy of motherhood. Anna is keenly aware how societally monstrous it is to admit to an imperfect and incomplete maternal bond.

It is astonishing to find such a parent in fiction who isn’t vilified or caricatured. Reading her personal thoughts, I experienced uncomfortable flashbacks to my own daughter’s infancy, when I was deeply in the clutch of what is incongrously referred to as “the baby blues” and finding it hard to do anything but endure the fact of her existence. I had a toddler screaming out his dethronement, and an infant who never slept, and I didn’t like either of them; love, well, it felt like a mirage. Whether you find Anna likable or not for admitting her difficult feelings for her daughter is irrelevant, as likability has been a difficult thing for all the Planetfall narrators heretofore. Outside of the dark, semi-dystopian futures they show us, these novels make us privy to the deeply intimate thoughts of prickly, conflicted people, and that intimacy is a gift. What matters is that Anna is real, and real in a way that hurts.

Planetfall tells the story of a religious mission on a distant planet, living in the shadow of an alien structure they call “God’s City.” We view the seemingly bucolic community through the eyes of a deeply damaged first-person narrator, and as the narrative unravels, so do her hard-coded avoidance and survival mechanisms. After Atlas takes place on Earth 40 years after the mission to God’s City left the planet; its protagonist is a child left behind by his colonist parents to become an asset of a gov-corp, not precisely considered a human being, who is tasked with solving a murder mystery in a situation so thankless it can do nothing but end in perpetual indenture. Before Mars is like these novels, though they all take place on different planets: its protagonist is trapped and scared, hounded by the ghosts of the past and the narrow possibilities of the future. It’s like the earlier books, and so much more.

"I'm Not Crazy!" A Space Story


4 out of 5 stars
This one took me a little longer to get into than I expected it to.  I think I started it too close to another book that I absolutely loved this year.  I started this very close to when I finished Obscura by Joe Hart and it had this feeling that it was going to be a similar story.  While it was, I thought that Newman was able to write a poignant story that covered a lot of topics.

The character of Anna was different than your average female protagonist and in a really good way.  She's flawed and in ways that a lot of people can't understand or follow.  I won't get into the reason that Newman gives her but I respect the heck out of it.  I know that not all woman reacts to things in the same way and I liked that she covered a couple different stigmas around women.  (This feels a little cryptic but I don't like to give away spoilers when I can avoid them).

The story itself was something that I ended up really getting into the deeper I got into Before Mars.  Newman painted a world that felt flawed in some way.  A way that Anna couldn't really understand either but I wanted to figure it out with her.  The last hour or so of the book I was totally enthralled.  The reveal and ending really surprised me - I wasn't sure what was coming but I couldn't predict it.

Overall, I found myself enjoying Before Mars quite a bit.  It wasn't a perfect book by any means - but the topics it discussed and the way in which it made me as a reader feel as confused and concerned as Anna was pretty cool.

I did not read any of the other Planetfall books and I don't think that I needed to.  I can't tell exactly what would be in them but I'm intrigued by the world that Newman wrote in Before Mars - so I imagine those others books are similar.

This was an intriguing read! First of all, this was the first book I can remember reading that had a non-binary gendered character AND the author treated them like a real person aka their gender identity was not at the forefront of the book conflict. So many points for that! Second of all, this book was a page-turner from start to finish. I spent so many nights staying awake waaaay past my bedtime in order to read just ONE more chapter....and then just ONE MORE chapter after that!

I will start by saying I did not read the other two in the series. This was recommended to me on Net Galley, and so I was unfamiliar with the world or, if they showed up in former books, the characters.
The plot synopsis sounded interesting.
The writing was engaging.

It's missing three stars for a few reasons.
1) Anna (our MC) spends an inordinate amount of time talking about how she didn't want to be a mother, didn't really like her husband, and all the associated guilt that went with that. This would have been a nice payoff if those factors played hugely into the super surprising ending, but they didn't really, so it was just a lot of pages I ended up skimming.

2) The excitement took about 2/3rds of the book to build up, and I almost DNFed it in that time. Newman did a good job of building up the "am I crazy or is this really happening?" in Anna's head, but it was interspersed with too much drama and dialogue and got a bit bogged down.

3) There were actually lots of cool bits in this story that I wanted to know more about, but didn't learn anything. Like Anna's parents, for instance, and their whole schtick. (Maybe they were another book? I don't know? The synopsis' of the other ones didn't indicate that.)

4) The ending felt a bit rushed. Epsecially one bit. You can message me for further thoughts if you want, but I won't spoil it. But I didn't care for the epilogue much.

Pluses: non binary character ftw!! Space! Cool technology!

All in all, two stars. Could have been better.

"Before Mars" eBook was published in 2018 and wad written by Emma Newman (http://www.enewman.co.uk). Ms. Newman has published 10 novels or novellas. This is the third novel in her "Planetfall" universe.

I categorize this novel as ‘PG’ because it contains Mature Language. The story is set in the near future on a human base on Mars. The primary character is geologist and artist Anna Kubrin.

Kubrin is surprised when she is offered the opportunity to fill the open fifth slot of the current Mars team. For her, this is the opportunity of a lifetime. That is until she arrives. Once she is on Mars she encounters animosity from some team members. She also begins to find evidence that something is very wrong.

Living on Mars with just four other humans on a base owned and operated by one of the wealthiest men on Earth leaves Kubrin with few options. She begins to quietly investigate, but she is sure her efforts will soon be discovered.

I thought that this was an interesting 8.4 hour read of this 352 page science fiction mystery. To me, the Kubrin character was not psychologically stable enough to have been cleared for this Mars mission. I thought that the character spent too much time dealing with her psychological issues. Aside from that, the story was interesting, though a little slow. While part of a series, this novel reads well on its own. The cover art is OK, but I think it could have been better. I give this novel a 3.8 (rounded up to a 4) out of 5.

Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/.

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

If you like your science fiction to be intimately psychological, Emma Newman's your gal. A huge amount of this book is internal to the main character, while further fleshing out the gov-corp-run, AI-heavy (possibly very prescient) world Newman has built over the course of the series. Of the 3, I think I still prefer After Atlas for its multi-genre mashup, but Before Mars is good stuff.

I quickly got into this mystery when Anna Kubrin’s first day at the Mars colony leaves her with several questions. It seems her luggage has been messed with. She finds a warning note from herself. And one of the team members takes an immediate dislike to her.

What I did not know is was the cause of these questions. It could be that Anna is not quite right in the mind or it could be that things are just not as they should be.

In this future, everyone has an implant in their brain. The implant allows them to record anything and relive it later in an immersion session. Immersion psychosis is a possible outcome. The implant also interfaces with external systems, providing communication, news and even health information. It seems like so much could go wrong with such a system.

But Anna is the heroine of the story so I was convinced (well, I hoped) that she was sane and there was a real mystery to be solved.

The Mars base that is the location of this story is called Principia. That is also the name of the AI that runs the facility and interfaces with the implants that everyone has. It controls access within the base and outside of the base. Is it perfect? That is a great question.

No spoilers, here. Lets just say the mystery has many aspects: psychology, geology, conspiracy, art, family, discovery and, ultimately, the future of earth and human-kind.

Before Mars is book three of the series Planetfall, but stands alone. It is the first book in the series I have read, but I am interested enough to go back and read book 1, which is also called Planetfall.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher, though NetGalley, so that I could bring you this honest review.

I kept reading this thinking that I would get into the story. The problem was I could not find the story so after 1/3 of the book I quit reading.

Interesting characters, interesting take on memories- how they affect us, how they are stored, and how they reflect reality (or what is NOT reality). This book is Science Fiction in its’ setting, but literary fiction in the events and characters.