Rating: 
Summary: Not very good
Review: Similar to those made-for-TV movies on the Sci-Fi channel. Not very imaginative and at times, actually boring. Try the Hyperion series instead.
Rating: 
Summary: Plodding and tedious
Review: Kim Stanley Robinson has done his homework. He knows all about atompsheric partial pressures and soil ecology. He knows how to convey information via the written word competently. He knows not the first thing about people or fiction writing, though, and that's unfortunate. The Mars "trilogy" is a single boring, shapeless mass of words. The characters are laughably two-dimensional symbols, avatars for ideas or concepts -- they're not people. If they were, you wouldn't want to know them.And they talk. They talk and talk and talk. They argue and argue. They talk about terraforming, they talk about politics, they talk about each other, in an endless cycle of debates, meetings, conventions, committees, assemblies, conclaves and arguments. Robinson has invented a kind of Model UN, he has worked to draw charts of manufactured political factions boring each other to death in interminable meetings. It is not interesting. It was not worthwhile to expend this effort towards such a boring end. What is most depressing is not the boring storyline, the endless loops of the same argument, the stupid and contemptible behaviour of many of the characters, but Robinson's contempt for the English language. English, to him, is just a tool; a means of expressing information. If he could write fiction in equations he would. He ends sentences with "etc., etc." and tells us about his characters' lavatorial habits. He shows not a shred of joy, of affinity for his medium. There is no structure; "Red Mars", "Green Mars" and "Blue Mars" are all the same book. That this deathless, humorless prose is used to trace out a saga of such incomprehensible tedium is unforgiveable. Only the bland competence of the whole endeavor rescues it from complete failure; and even then Robinson has missed things: the SI unit of pressure is the Pascal, not the Bar, and that Kelvins don't come in degrees.
Rating: 
Summary: great first book for a sci fi trilogy
Review: This is one of the better science fiction books I've read in quite awhile. I originally read the first two novels a few years back. One of the things I love about this book is how much of the Mars geography and geology the author details. The plot line is very good, giving a lot of characters to follow but not jumping around too much until the reader is ready. I also like how it starts out with the assasination of one of the main characters, going into a sort of mystery novel type of thing before spending most of the rest of the book retracing the history of the settlers and Mars up to that point in time. The second novel is quite good as well, taking off where the first book ends and spending a lot of time with some of the more extremist characters and their activities against the Mars government. The third novel seems to lose the driving plot the other two books have, and admittedly, I've never finished it, so I can't comment on whether Robinson pulls it together in the end in a satisfactory way. Basically, if you like epic sci fi with lots of solid scientific description strewn through out, then this series is for you or at least the first two novels.
Rating:
Summary: I was suffering badly from insomnia...
Review: ...so I started reading this book. About a third of the way through my doctor prescribed clonazepam and I no longer needed the book. Honestly, I can't see how anyone could get through this book without already suffering from insomnia as badly as I was. It is the most boring book I have ever read and I could only force myself because it was the middle of the night, there was nothing to do, and I had mistakenly bought it.
I am a fan of hard science fiction, and that is what this book purports to be. But hard-SF needs to be speculative and push boundaries. This doesn't. An analogy might explain - in the 19th century cantilever bridge building might have been seen as cutting edge technology. Imagine someone writing cantilever bridge fiction. The science aspect of it would be completely uninteresting. It would be a story about the politics and economics of getting the bridge built. Well this book is about that interesting. It's a collection of uninteresting unealistic characters involved in endless contrived office politics trying to get some uninteresting science and engineering done. It just so happens that it's on Mars but most of it is far less interesting than bridge building. I'm not exaggerating. We have to read about how concrete foundations were laid, how bricks were manufactured and have to suffer detailed geological surveys of the areas the characters visit.
If your preferred genre is boring books try "Report on Probability A" by Aldiss. I used to think it was the most boring book on earth but at least it was short and turned boredom into an art form worth rereading. Read Mars is boredom without purpose. Your time would be better spent actualy reading some real science about Mars.
Addendum, Jan 1994
Well I did eventually finish this book even tyhough I thought I'd given up. Some things do happen later in the book. The characters remain supremely uninteresting and there are still no original ideas. But there is some entertaining large scale destruction if you like that sort of thing. So I bumped the rating up to 2 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Flat characters, lacks a plot, verbose, tedious, repetitive
Review: Well, that pretty much sums it up. I am a die-hard sci-fi fan, but this book does the genre a disservice. Even being trained as a physicist (i.e. I LIKE science descriptions), Robinson's are long-winded and confusing, and often completely irrelevant to the plot. I just skimmed the last half of the book; the plot had completely disappeared by that point. A war appears out of nowhere, they crash the moon into the planet? Come on, even if you want to go off the deep end, at least give us a reasonable plot explanation. The characters are flatter than a week-old can of open pepsi. Yes, I would like to imagine the hot, salty, sweaty sex of 60-year-old Martian settlers who don't have much else going in the personality department, thank you very much (..NOT!!) And even the colonization is totally unrealistic (as a Mar Society member and supporter, I should know). How the hell they send an seemingly unlimited supply of stuff from earth, I can't imagine. For the amount this book goes off about political realities, it should face up to the fact that it costs a LOT to put anything in space , let alone send it to mars. Really, I don't see how people can rave about this as the best book on Mars colonization. A GOOD book has some simple requirements : INTRIGUING CHARACTERS, COHERENT PLOT, INTERESTING WRITING STYLE. All of these are MISSING in this red, dusty, deserted, martian wasteland of a book. If you want some good sci-fi (you know you do) I recommed these:
ISSAC ASIMOV - The Foundation Series (absolutely a corner stone of modern sci fi)
- The Robot Series (start w/ Caves of Steel)
ORSON SCOTT CARD - Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide
PHILLIP JOSE FARMER - Riverword series (start w/ To Your Scattered Bodies Go) These are just a few great sci-fi reads. Don't waste your time on Robinson's books. If this is his supposed best, I don't need to see the rest.
Rating: 
Summary: Epic Mars...
Review: I read this book quite a few years ago. I could give you all my very detailed opinion of this book -- I loved it, it would be easy -- but I would never do the book justice. Suffice to say the characters are marvelously drawn (years later I still think about them) and the plot marvelously intricate. I've even gotten my mom and sister to read the Trilogy and they both loved it. What it all comes down to is you should buy it (or borrow it if you must to get your hands on it) and read it (and the other two in the Trilogy --> Green Mars & Blue Mars). You won't be disappointed...and you certainly won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Rousing beginning
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: Mars Series not Sci-Fi but earth politics on another planet
Review: It should be crime to label this series as Sci-Fi. It is a never ending story of earth-like politics on another planet. I bought the entire series expecting a story about the terra forming of Mars and ended up struggling through three books worth of tedious, difficult to read and sickening politics. Compared to something like Dune, if one would like to draw some comparison to a 'political space saga', this is poorly written and terribly boring. If you're willing to pay for the shipping fees from South Africa, you can have them for free.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: This book is a great work. Robinson is a master of weaving together near-science fact and political intrigue, all within a sweeping narrative. The characters in the book are interesting to say the least, with each refusing to be one-dimensional. Robinson's story seems to be quite feasible, in that I never found myself saying "No way" while reading the book. This book sparked an interest in me in planetary exploration like no other book has done before. I find myself visiting the NASA Mars exploration website often as a result of reading this novel. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Red Red Mars
Review: This was an excellent piece of literature. It is not a action-packed adventure, as some Sci-Fi fans love, but it is truly storytelling at it's best. I look forward to reading the rest of the Mars Trilogy. I especially look forward to rejoining some of my favorite characters in the next book. I was saddened at the loss of some characters in the first book. So Anyway, the book is excellent! Buy it! (or go to your local library)
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