The Empress of Mars
Kage Baker
Tor, 2009
Kage Baker is one of those author’s that I always mean to read but never get around to doing it. I’ve always been intrigued by her Company novels but intimidated by the prospect of jumping into a new series. The Empress of Mars is listed as being a Company novel, and the cover certainly mimics the the other Company but new readers should rest assured that The Empress of Mars feels like a standalone work and I never felt at a loss for having missed out on other Company novels.
The plot is fairly straight-forward. Mary Griffith runs a bar on colonial Mars, run by the British Arean Company, called the Empress of Mars. The plot is not grandiose but rather almost quaint. I don’t mean that in a bad way but the story of a hardworking colonist struggling against the oversight of an oppressive administration is something quite familiar; especially from the American perspective. Baker manages to imbue that familiar struggle with a vivid originality; I was particularly fond of her use of the Celtic clan structure to increase bonds between colonists and the emergence of a sort of monotheistic Dianic neopaganism as an more widespread religion.
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