Rating: 
Summary: Good grip on space politics
Review: While Kim Stanley Robinson's RED MARS and sequels presented a more imaginative view of the technological aspect of Mars exploration, Bova's MARS benefits from the author's many decades of professional interest in the politics and economics of spaceflight. The best parts of his book are those that deal with the machinations of politicians on Earth and how they were outsmarted by the political tyros is Mars orbit and on the planet. Character development is OK by sci-fi standards, with the characteristic drift into the melodramatic. The physics of spaceflight is competently presented, although the biomedical aspect of the story is weak and in fact very grating for a health professional to read. Unfortunately, the biomedical material is an essential plot device and its weakness hampers the whole story.The audio version, read by Dick Hill, is easy to listen to. Hill successfully meets the challenge of covering the accents of American, British, Russian, Israeli, Brazilian, Chinese, and Indian characters, among others, although he does have problems shifting from one accent to another in dialogue-intensive passages. This unabridged version is presented on 6 cassette tapes and requires either an audiobook adapter or a player with a balance control (to save tape, left and right channels have separate programs).
Rating:
Summary: Weak characters, but better science than the Moon series.
Review: The science is much better than Bova's work in Moonrise and Moonwar, but again weak charecterizations and some implausible events made the story hackneyed and tiresome. Events become too convenient for the story's progression and the interplay of the characters too coincidental to be real.
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Summary: good book exiting cleverly written great for sci-fi buffs
Review: Mars is a great book.it is full of exitment and I really got to identify with some of the charters . I found it really beleaveable and I hope that I'll one day witness a mission such as this. the relasionship between the charters was exiting some lustful others full of hate. over all I enjoyed this book tremendesly
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Summary: It was one of the greatest sci fi books I have ever read!!!!
Review: It was an enthraling story that keeps it glued to you face, so you can't put it down. It was very realistic, and you can tell he did lots of research before writing it.
Rating: 
Summary: A bulked-out beach-book
Review: Perhaps I was expecting too much, instead it confirmed why Bova's books don't work for me. I like Gene Wolfe, Frank Herbert, Hermann Hesse, Rachmaninov - people that carry me along on an emotional & intellectual tide and leave excited for a long while afterwards. I finished Mars on the beach in two days, put it down and never looked back - I felt I'd just read a rather boring popular science magazine article accompanied by a Disney tour-guide holding me the hand all the way and in the end never really telling me anything I didn't already know.
Rating:
Summary: A true to life novel that's more science than fiction.
Review: Ben Bova has captured the atmosphere and brought the future to the here-and-now with this book. His description of man's first visit to our neighbour planet is so realistic that NASA is probably using it to script out its actual plan for their trip.
Rating:
Summary: I enjoyed this book.
Review: I believe that this book was not about Mars. This book was a way to protest about the way mankind reacts when science advances faster than our understnding. Ulterior motives, politics, personal hatred, racial stereotypes, pride and more are found in the tripulation of scientist on their way to Mars. It matters not that the book is in some ways a "text book".I,for one, didn't know that the sky in Mars is pink. I believe that the major task of literature is to inform. Ben Bova has a fun way to do it. I find "Mars" a book that keeps you reading. Is like a mirror of our soroundings. I can see a female vice-president getting so upset about what apparently are three simple Navajo words.( aren't we making a big deal about Clinton and Lewinsky currently?) Bova wants to make a comparison between the two worlds by placing a "village" that resembles terrestrial dwelings. It could be also a warning that whatever happened in Mars could happen here. I think that everything in this novel is rather symbolic and we should not take it so literally. if you read this book thinking that you are going to read about Mars, then don't read it, unless you want to learn about regolites, permafrosts, and other geological formations. There is nothing else in Mars to talk about. If you want to read about men and women undertaking a major scientific endeavor and read about their adventures, then you won't be dissapointed!
Rating: 
Summary: Great,but needless character history
Review: I've read SF for years, with Mars stories a favorite. As far as exploration goes, I really feel that Bova captures the excitement of the first Mars landing. I couldn't wait for them to continue exploring the new world. I could almost imagine myself there. However, I found the continuing flashbacks to the past (to develop the characters) annoying. I want to read about Mars, not about relationships prior to the landing. It is possible to read the book, skipping over the chapters of endless flashbacks. I did it, and got a lot more out of the book. I've been waiting for the sequel - come on Ben, let's go back again! There's more to learn and discover about the planet - but not the characters! We know enough about them already!
Rating:
Summary: A book that you are going to return to for many years!
Review: Being an long time science fiction addict having read mountains of SF over the past 30 years, I rate Ben Bovas "Mars" as one of the best Mars explorations books that I have ever read. Its strength is its closeness to reality and its strong discipline that bars the author from getting carried away. He has hit a brilliant and clever balance been "faction" and fiction. The book is the fiction sister to Zubrin's practical (and impressive) how-to get-to-Mars book that likewise is a bible for Mars proponents if they like down-to-the-fact books about the hardship of making one of humanity's biggest and most ambitious projects come true. John Peter Andersen
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Summary: I thought Carl Sagan died.
Review: The best thing I can say about reading this book was that I read it. It was comparable to Sagan's "CONTACT" in that it was merely a thinly guised textbook of planetary science, any kind of momentum the story had the strength to muster was dashed quickly when Bova thought it nessesary to explain for at least the forty-third time that Martian regolith is superoxidized, or that the Martian atmosphere is not the same as Earth's and exposed humans wouldn't fare so well. Bova's "lesson plan" approach to science fiction is better suited to a high school Earth Science class than novel writting. His characters need work too, I was expecting the Vice President to hop onto a broomstick and spell DOROTHY in the blue sky, which is unlike the Martian sky, which is red. Reading between the lines I gleaned this, "If any of you yellow half bus riding readers didn't know - the Martian sky is red and Earth's is blue because they are not the same.". I read science fiction because I believe facts like these are givens and when removed from Bova's work the stark truth is evident, this book lacks anything remotely imaginative.
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