Ares Express [Paperback]

I enjoyed both this novel and the previous, "Desolation Road." The two major reasons are the eccentric characters and the exotic setting of a far-future terraformed Mars.

The first reason for my enjoyment of this (so far) two book series, is the the strange and unusual characters. Most, if not all, of the characters has some eccentric trait that makes them outside the norm. Such traits include supernatural or magical talants, unusual outlooks, being part of a strange and exotic sub-culture, and most extreme of all, undergoing an actual physical transformation from human to inhuman. I especially liked the two main protagonists, one from each book, who turn out to be more unusual than it first appears. In each novel, the supposedly human protagonist goes in search of an powerful alien entity that went missing, only to find out that they were really, literally, searching for their own true selves!

The second reason I like "Desolation Road" and "Ares Express," is the exotic far-future setting of a terraformed Mars. The various locations are depicted in wonderful and mystical detail. There is a great variety of settings including an underground city of Belledonna, the diamond-domed Grand Valley, the lush Forest of Chrys, along with the titled settings of Desolation Road and Ares Express.

Because of these, and other reasons, I really hope the auther writes a third book in this weird and wonderfully exotic world.

Ares Express is the story of Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer 12th, daughter to an engineer in a caste-system society which lives on the massive fusion-powered steam locomotives of Mars. She loves the locomotives and longs to be her trains's next Engineer, but while women drive trains in other places, other societies, they don't in hers; instead, her family arranges for her a marriage to a galley-supervisor on another train. She runs away instead, and soon lands herself in the position of being the only person on in the world who can save reality as she knows it.

The world McDonald creates is a breathtaking riot of people and cultures, technology and magic, dire threats and unlikely salvation, where the impossible is perfectly normal and the dramas of home and family and dreams and duty intertwine harmoniously with those of a threatened apocalypse. The characters, too, are a wonder---unlikely and fantastic to us, but fitting seamlessly into this technological fantasy-realm: Uncle Neon, the man who was struck by lightning on the tracks and whose consciousness now resides in a signal beacon; Grandmother Taal, who can work miracles with magic, but only on brown things; Little Pretty One, the ghost of Sweetness Octave's dead twin sister who is . . . rather more than that; Devastation Harx, who seeks to destroy all mechanical entities on the planet and above it from a human-powered flying cathedral, and Sweetness Octave herself, who intended to save herself from a destiny someone else would force upon her, and ends up tasked with doing the same for her entire planet.

Reading this book is a delightful experience---an epic heroic fantasy story, a journey through a fascinating world, and, like a frantic high-speed flight on a runaway nuclear locomotive, a truly spectacular ride.

If I could sum up this novel with one single word, it would have to be "weird." In a good sort of way, mind you, but weird nonetheless. Big, ambitious, and multilayered the way all Ian McDonald books are, Ares Express also possesses a healthy dose of fun, wit, and absurdity which make this work quite different from what McDonald has accustomed us to in recent years. If Jack Vance, Terry Pratchett, and Hal Duncan had ever teamed up to write a book, they would have come up with something akin to Ares Express.

Hence, those readers who found novels such as River of Gods and Brasyl a bit too cerebral may enjoy Ares Express on a very different level. Just buckle up and get ready for quite a ride! Things don't always make sense, and at times one wonders what the heck is going on and where McDonald is going with this story, but stick with it to the end. Ares Express is a satisfying and rewarding read.

Here's the blurb:

A Mars of the imagination, like no other, in a colorful, witty SF novel, taking place in the kaleidoscopic future of Ian McDonald's Desolation Road, Ares Express is set on a terraformed Mars where fusion-powered locomotives run along the network of rails that is the planet's circulatory system and artificial intelligences reconfigure reality billions of times each second. One young woman, Sweetness Octave Glorious-Honeybun Asiim 12th, becomes the person upon whom the future--or futures--of Mars depends. Big, picaresque, funny; taking the Mars of Ray Bradbury and the more recent, terraformed Marses of authors such as Kim Stanley Robinson and Greg Bear, Ares Express is a wild and woolly magic-realist SF novel, featuring lots of bizarre philosophies, strange, mind-stretching ideas, and trains as big as city blocks.

As far as the worldbuilding goes, since the book is set in the future of McDonald's Desolation Road, I was afraid that not having read that novel would mean that I might miss nuances and certain plot points. Yet Ares Express takes place sor far in the future that you can read and enjoy it without having read Desolation Road. As is always his wont, Ian McDonald's narrative makes the setting come alive. This is a semi-terraformed Mars whose imagery is nothing short of arresting.

Although Ares Express is doubtless Sweetness Octave's book, it's the supporting cast which gives the novel its depth and flavor. Grandmother Taal, Devastation Harx, the United Artists, and many more characters add more layers and help make this an unforgettable tale.

The pace is uneven throughout, and trying to make sense of what exactly is happening can be mind-boggling at times. There are POV shifts from one paragraph to another in certain portions of the novel, which takes some getting used to. But once you grow comfortable with the fact that McDonald is willingly pushing this story all over the place, everything settles down and it gets easier.

Though Ares Express possesses some of the qualities which made books like River of Gods, Brasyl, Cyberabad Days, and The Dervish House such fantastic reads, this book is a world away from the others. Wild, strange, picaresque, and funny, Ares Express will surprise you on several levels.

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