Rating: 
Summary: Unconvincing end
Review: Robinson's Mars Trilogy begins as admirably written hard science fiction, based for the most part on physics and geology. As the story progresses, the plot is based more and more upon Robinson's previous suppositions than on fact - in short, he begins to extrapolate. By the last page of the last book, we're asked to believe that human beings can postpone death almost indefinitely, have solved the problem of war, and are ready to colonize space, all in about three hundred years. My willing suspension of disbelief wore out about two-thirds of the way through the last book.
Rating: 
Summary: Final instalment of modern science fiction epic
Review: A second revolution has succeeded and Mars is independent. While Earth is in turmoil, the colonists set about creating a unique society, with the survivors of the "first hundred" playing a key role. Having read Mr Robinson's entire Mars trilogy, I have to say that on balance it was probably worth it. However, from my own point of view the whole exercise could have been improved with some judicious editing. Some people may revel in the lengthy descriptive passages of the Mars landscape and weather. Personally, while I appreciated the novelty and detail of this in Red Mars, to indulge it over three books was too much. In fact, Green and Blue Mars could have been combined into one volume, such is the scarcity of actual plot development. I can't say as well that the conceit of having the main characters live extended lifespans over hundreds of years worked particularly well. Nearly two hundred years pass over the course of Red, Green and Blue Mars, however I don't think the author created enough sense or awareness of the passage of this time. I always think this is important in multi-volume sagas that have events taking place over generations, in the sense that it conveys a feeling of depth. No doubt you could argue that this was the whole point, as the most important and indeed most fleshed-out character in the whole trilogy is Mars itself and therefore on a planetary scale two hundred years is but an instant. For me however, it was just another drawback to the trilogy. Nonetheless, I would still have to highly recommend the Mars trilogy to serious science fiction fans.
Rating: 
Summary: Great with male characters, but the females need some work.
Review: I liked this series very much. I was in awe of the technical writing and found the plots likeable. I read Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars together and the further I got the more annoyed I became with the female characterizations. Robinson is clearly better at writing about men. His male characters have such depth and are intriguing. The female characters are either mentally unbalanced, sex addicted, jealous, petty or incomplete with lack of description. The males have such interesting relationships with each other, but I can't think of any females in any of the books who are even friendly with each other. I liked this series very much and loved the men characters, but the books would have been much better with more rounded female characters.
Rating:
Summary: The conclusion of a fine series, but no great surprises
Review: While Red Mars was a strong stand-alone novel about the first settlers of the Red Planet, Green Mars and Blue Mars really need to be read together. For example, several of the main characters who took up so much space in Green Mars without actually contributing anything finally find significance in Blue Mars. There are also strong continuities of plot and theme, especially in the way that the second half of Green flows into the first half of Blue. While Green took forever to get going, Blue starts considerably stronger before fading into Robinson's now-familiar descriptions of Martian scenery that can be described as either breath-taking or interminable depending on your point of view. In fact, the greatest weakness of Blue is that feeling that we've seen it all before. After the thousand-odd pages that make up the first two volumes, readers might be hungry for some variety, a few surprise plot twists, a technical tour-de-force of some kind, but instead it's pretty much business as usual on Mars, with the same (now aged) characters often grinding the same metaphorical axes. The murder mystery and sexual tension that drove Red has completely dissipated, and Robinson's attempts along these lines in Blue seem spurious, if not downright silly. Readers who loved Green as much as Red will surely find this book rewarding enough, but those who didn't feel Green was quite up to snuff won't find anything special in Blue.
Rating: 
Summary: The "Mars Series" is great for the teenage male in your life
Review: The three books in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars Trilogy" are my absolute all-time-favorites. He is truly gifted at writing about advanced science and technology and equally adept at creating "real" characters, because he understands psychology. This is a rare talent: to be scientifically knowledgable and a master at creating believable characters. The books are part action, part scientific explanation (like Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park fame), and part character development. In "Red Mars" (the first in the series) Robinson paints a totally believable picture of what our future might be like as we get ready to explore and colonize Mars. Mega-corporations, earthly power struggles, and the selection process for determining who might get to be the first to go to Mars, are all very possible and Robinson crafts a story around these topics with ease. In the second book, "Green Mars," Robinson portrays the struggle to get vegetation growing and to create a breathable atmosphere. He also describes more political struggles between those on Earth and those on Mars. This was probably my favorite of the three, but mainly because I am more interested in the science that would be needed in this phase of colonization. In the third book, "Blue Mars," the planet become more Earth-like. The atmosphere is more developed, water travel becomes possible, and more. (I don't want to give it all away!) The books can be kind of scholarly at times, but I was so impressed with these books that I gave them to my teenage brother. He was so impressed with them, that he gave them to one of his very best pals. And we all had a blast discussing them together. If there is a teenage male in your life -- or if you love sci-fi and have always wondered what it might be like to go to Mars -- then this trilogy is definitely for you. Very highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: I tried to read the entire trilogy straight through
Review: I was on such a roll from the previous two books in the series that I read this straightaway after finishing Green Mars. It was too much. I think at this point in the series the book was just getting too complicated to follow everything and remember everything going on. I'm going to have to read the series again, but pace myself. Still, the immagery of the changes on Mars, the oceans, development of life, development of government, development of already very developed relationships was intense. I found myself longing to be there, wishing that Mars can be colonised in my lifetime. This is something good to read if you've read the previous two books, just be prepared for some VERY involved, detailed writing. Another note, this book is writen from a very liberal point of view.....I found the concepts of the government being put in place intriguing, and in a perfect world(maybe Mars?) it could work.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic Novel
Review: Robinson's Mars series is one of those rare SF novels (and yes, despite being 3 books long, it forms a single novel) that breaks the bounds of the genre and can hold its own in the general arena. In other words, one does not have to be a science-fiction fan to enjoy it. It explores the human condition and the universe as well, and the relationship of the two, through the eyes of some of the most beautifully developed characters to be found in all of literature. It is both cosmic and very, very human in its scope.
While I greatly enjoy SF, Robinson sets the bar higher for a genre that is often too comfortable in its niche. He looks at where we are going, and points to a bright future--one that is possible to achieve if we have the heart to try.
Rating:
Summary: Satisfying if uneven trilogy conclusion
Review: One of the most impressive ongoing hard science fiction epics of recent years is Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Red Mars won the Nebula award, Green Mars and Blue Mars each won the Hugo. Robinson has tried to portray, in considerable detail, the story of the colonization and terraforming of Mars, beginning in 2027 and continuing for some 200 years. He has worked hard to get the science right, and to this reader, it is very real-seeming, impressive and interesting. It must be admitted, though, that he made some errors. Robinson himself has admitted to fudging the time scale of terraformation (compressing maybe 1000 years of likely effort to 200 years) in order to keep the story at a human scale. In addition there were certain annoying thermodynamic errors, and some aerodynamic silliness. I also took issue with his large reliance on nearly autonomous machines; and with the somewhat handwaving and near-miraculous introduction of radical life-extension technology (this last being in part another strategy to keep the story "human-scale", as it allows him to have some characters survive the entire trilogy).) Red Mars told the story of the initial colonization of Mars, first by the "First Hundred", a joint Russian-American expedition, then by Earth-dominated, mostly corporate-controlled colonists who followed to build on the efforts of the "First Hundred". It ended with an unsuccessful revolution against Earth's domination of Mars. The Red in its title referred to the pristine, unmodified, planet. Green Mars advanced the story of Mars' colonization, introducing many second- and third-generation characters, and ended in a generally successful revolution which established Martian independence. The Green of the title refers to the greening effects of terraformation. The action of the book, like that of the first two, is presented in a series of novella-length parts, each somewhat independent, each from the viewpoint of a different character. Many of the First Hundred return in this book as viewpoint characters of sections, as well as some of the later generation members introduced in Green Mars, and at least one new, significant, character for this book. To me, Robinson's best work has always been at novella length, so this plays to his strengths. (For example, my favorite Mars story, not part of the official Mars trilogy, is "Green Mars", collected in The Martians.) The linked-novella form also allows significant jumps in time, important in a story which takes place over such a long time (about a century for Blue Mars, I believe). A negative effect of this structure is a certain slackening in the overall story: as I have said, Blue Mars seems mainly to be about the rapprochement of Red and Green (quite movingly symbolized on a personal level by several segments which deal with the personal rapprochement of long-time "enemies" Ann Clayborne, the leading Red, and Sax Russell, the first terraformer); but in addition it is concerned with rounding out the overall story of the colonization of Mars, and for Robinson this means considering the future of the rest of the solar system as well. Thus Blue Mars has sections set on Earth, on Mercury, and in the moons of Uranus, as well as visits to Venus, the asteroids, and the others of the Outer Planets. These sections are quite interesting, but also seem to result in a certain dilution of the overall effect. Besides his interest in the "hard" sciences as played out in the gut-level details of the exploration and terraforming of Mars, Robinson is very interested in "softer" sciences, and much of the trilogy is concerned with politics. I found the discussions of politics quite interesting, though a bit biased (but generally a pretty fair attempt is made to show most sides of the various issues). There is not one but two extended descriptions of "constitutional conventions". Robinson also takes on the sociological effects of life-extension: and here he seems a little less sound. He tries to depict the effects of great age on people, and makes some good points, but is not quite convincing. More tellingly, I think he severely underplays the negative population effects of life-extension. Robinson is, it seems to me, an Utopian at heart, and he is a little too sanguine about people almost automatically adopting (solar-system-wide) policies such as one child per couple. Blue Mars, by itself, is a pretty successful trilogy closer, but not quite successful as a novel. I still rank Red Mars as the best novel of the series: it had a more coherent structure, was set over a shorter time-period, and featured my favorite writing of the series: the ecstatic novella "Falling into History", its central section. Still, it is only fair, I think, to consider the Mars trilogy as a unit, and as such it is very successful, very worthwhile. Almost inevitably, there are longeurs, and the multiple viewpoint character approach sometimes blurs the impact, sometimes results in tedious chapters. (I, for one, could have done without every one of Michel Duval's sections over the three novels.) Robinson's writing is clear throughout: for the most part he seems to have purposely trimmed his prose: at times the writing becomes a bit clipped or telegraphic, and only rarely does he wax lyrical, or ecstatic.
Rating: 
Summary: Radical Left Primer
Review: I read the first two books because I like sci-fi and the idea of terraforming mars. Those books were a little slow and too PC. I gave the third one a chance to wrap up the series hoping the action would pick up and that the politics would be a little more realistic. Neither happened. It was worse than the first two. The author continuosly refers to "a new way of doing things" and in a convoluted boring fashion states yet another case for Marxism. You might as well read "The Communist Manifesto". Better yet, read "A History of Communism" to see how many times the authors "vision" has been tried...and failed.
Rating:
Summary: the infinite resolution of god's eye
Review: Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy probably worked for you if you love science, literature, and people. Or if it didn't work for you, you may not be into extended, involved discourse. Blue Mars seemed to have a bit more than the first two books. But that makes sense--this dream-world expands in our minds, from a tiny speck, the words "Red Mars". KSR seems to progressively relax during the course of the stories, drawing out the descriptions of places, people, and ideas further and further, expanding the horizons of the narrative, in a way that compliments the concurrent expansion of our own minds as we read the books. He seems to explore each thread, each idea, as long and deeply as he possibly can. But this is only fitting. Before we die we want to go deep--go deep into reality. And if great books can't do it for us, what else do we hope will? How long can KSR make the now? As long as you're willing to let him.
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