Rating: 
Summary: Best of Three...
Review: Green Mars is the best of a great Trilogy. Fast paced and once again depicting vividly imagined Martian vistas this book is the quickest read of Robinson's Trilogy. Also, with the introduction of several new characters Robinson continues to explore in immense detail how people are constantly shaping Mars...and how Mars returns the favor to those living on her.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful culture; More diagrams would help greatly.
Review: I really enjoyed Green Mars. I consider it equal to Red Mars. I would not read Green Mars without reading Red Mars first.
Green Mars gave me a feeling of a common culture developing among very different groups of people following the disastrous failed revolution described at the end of Red Mars. The author creates a history of Mars that feels authentic without borrowing too directly from events in human history.
The culture described in the book is sort of a utopian culture arising out of being separated from the rest of Earth society and the struggles of life on Mars. It is an appealing culture vaguely reminiscent of my notion of American culture around the time of the American Revolution. In other ways it vaguely reminds me of the culture of my home city, Madison, WI. It is open, educated, permissive, self-reliant, and very critical of in the influence of large corporations.
You have to suspend disbelief about how fast the people on Mars were able to industrialize and especially how fast they were able to affect the climate on Mars.
There was a good deal of technical information, but I would have liked even more technical discussion of eco-economics and the technology.
The author does a wonderful job describing the scenes so that you actually feel like you're there. I only wish he had added more diagrams and drawings. There were a few drawing, and they really helped clarify things. Sometimes the book spends countless pages describing the shapes relative locations of geological formations when a diagram would do a better job. More diagrams would allow the reader to focus on the beauty of these scenes instead of on understanding the basic facts.
I wish the author would authorize a supplement with drawings and diagrams for every scene described in the book, not in such a way that it detracts from what is intentionally left to the imagination, but rather in way that summarizes what is clearly described in the text. I don't think there would be anything lowbrow about that. Some things just lend themselves to diagrams better than to pages and pages of text.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece of hard SF...
Review: Let's be clear: this book is long, incredibly in-depth and can be hard work to read. While reading its predecessor, I had to put it down for a while before finishing, and this book is a worthy sequel to Red Mars.That being said... it is absolutely a masterpiece. The characters are deep, the science is dead-on and the story is a broad, grand arc encompassing many small events in an overall future history. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and it's my favorite of the trilogy. Just be ready to take your time.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece of hard SF...
Review: Let's be clear: this book is long, incredibly in-depth and can be hard work to read. While reading its predecessor, I had to put it down for a while before finishing, and this book is a worthy sequel to Red Mars. That being said... it is absolutely a masterpiece. The characters are deep, the science is dead-on and the story is a broad, grand arc encompassing many small events in an overall future history. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and it's my favorite of the trilogy. Just be ready to take your time.
Rating: 
Summary: Politics spoil an otherwise fabulous book
Review: Rating a book like this is difficult. Is it an independent novel? Should it be considered as part of the trilogy? Red Mars could stand on its own and we've elected to treat Green Mars independently as well. As such, it deserves its rating of 5: interesting, but derivative of Red Mars. It will have the cumulative influence on the genre that it will enjoy for being a part of the trilogy, but ultimately it is only a bridge between Red Mars and Blue Mars with little to say on its own behalf. Aside, of course, from the creation of Sax Russell. Our rating and belief in the Mars trilogy as a whole is much stronger than the individual rating of this book. Taken as part of a trilogy, our rating would be higher.
WHO SHOULD READ THIS:
Anyone who read and enjoyed Red Mars will likely feel good about proceeding along with Green. This will be a very large number of people indeed. There will be many people who vociferously disagree with us and think it is just as good or even more so. We think they're naïve clowns like the fellow who reviewed for curledup.com but that won't dismiss how they feel about the book. Any scientist should absolutely read this book-even in the absence of having read Red Mars-in order to be introduced to Sax Russell.
WHO SHOULD AVOID:
If you're a right-wing zealot, you probably won't be able to get over the politics. A good example is the TV show West Wing. If you can't stand to watch that show, you're going to find Green Mars equally irritating. The hippie sex increases quite a bit as well. If Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land offended your sensibilities, you'll find those same parallels here.
READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW AT INCHOATUS.COM
Rating: 
Summary: Tolerable middle
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: Second volume in Mars series
Review: The colonists revolt has been crushed and Earth's metanational corporations now control the planet. The "first hundred" colonists have been forced underground and bide their time before organising another attempt to gain independence and control their own destiny and that of Mars. In style, this is much like the previous instalment, Red Mars. It is slow moving and filled with loving geological and geographical descriptions of the planet. Again, hard core sci-fi fans will enjoy this book however personally I found it at times long drawn out and tedious.
Rating:
Summary: SOMETIMES REVOLUTIONS DO COME TRUE
Review: The first book of Kim Stanley Robinson's epic trilogy, RED MARS, wone the 1993 Nebula Award for Best Novel. This sequel, GREEN MARS, won the 1994 Hugo Award. Except for the last Hugo, which went to a Harry Potter novel (something which will taint the award forever), this award is not given lightly. Green Mars deserved all the honors that could be heaped upon it. In some ways it reminds me of Peter Jackson's Two Towers film, in that it is a middle chapter in a much greater landmark saga. Green Mars starts out about 40 years after the failed revolution by elements of the original settlers to free itself of the rule of Earth. That revolution caused much destruction and thousands of deaths but in the end it failed. It failed because there was no coordination among the disparate groups. Some were fighting to keep Mars as it was, some to change it, some were out merely to seize power for themselves. Now the legendary First Hundred settlers have been hunted down and reduced to just 39. Those that are alive must live in secret sanctuaries hidden throughout the landscape or take on fake identities. And all the while, Mars is beginning to show life on its surface. Hope springs eternal, for the metanational corporations, the real force that controls Mars, from Earth, are about to embark on a civil war amongst themselves. Also, a new generation of Martians are coming of age and doing something their predecessors didn't. Organizing themselves into a united and coordinated front. Establishing goals and having patience for the right moment to strike. Kinda like a twelve step program for revolution. In Green Mars, different parts of the book are divided into the perspective of the various characters. Nirgal, the first to be introduced, is a young ectogene, a cellular descendent of the First Hundred, who is taught by Hiroko, the weird and reclusive religious cult figure from the first book. He will try to be the bridge between the old and the new Mars, gathering support from the young generation who see themselves as Martians, not settlers. Art Randolph is from Earth, sent by the CEO of Praxis, a leading metanational company, to infiltrate the underground movement of Mars. His mission is not to harm it, but to help it. Sax Russell's identity is changed by plastic surgery so he can spy on the metanationals. Ann Clayborne, the eco-terrorist from the first book must find her will to fight again. Maya Toitovna must come to terms with her past and find the ground to stand on to become a leader for the new generation as well. Only together will all these elements, will all these different camps be able to defeat the powers of Earth. This book was great. Robinson's science fiction is not that of Star Wars. His vision of Mars is something to me that could truly happen. In fact, these books have read like future history, if there is such a thing. The settlers didn't land on Mars to fight aliens. They had to fight about what they wanted their world to be like in terms of politics, environment, and society, freedom. This book is a good treatise on what it takes to make a revolution. I mean, to make a good one. The book is really about finding commonality and being able to act as one. Kim is a masterful studier of character. There is no cuteness as in immature sf writers who know nothing of relationships except what they see in movies. This book is strong. It cannot be read alone though, meaning Red Mars must be read first. In some ways, reading this book is like looking at the problems faced by our founding fathers 200 years ago. The formation of a nation. Seek this book out.
Rating:
Summary: Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Review: This second volume of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy is a very worthy Hugo winner. Although there are elements of RED MARS I did not like (which I'll not go into now), with RED MARS as a background, I found GREEN MARS to be brilliant. If you haven't read Red Mars, don't tackle this volume first. KSR really did his homework in studying the social scientific aspects of his novel (as he did with the rest). The metanational and transnational corporations are a believable outgrowth of current economic trends and their reactions toward Mars and its denizens in GM logically follows their development in the novel. KSR also did a better job of staking out the various issues and ideologies involved in terraforming, giving the policy and political middle-ground between the Reds and the policy of the Transnational Authorities (which is terraforming as quickly as possible moving toward a viable atmosphere on Mars). The Part entitled "What is to be Done" was excellently written and extremely realistic (even if I have trouble believing that with all the political elements represented that some didn't opt out because of ideological extremism). That the group left without any real political action plans made the section even more convincing. The culture of the youth born on Mars seen through the eyes of members of the First Hundred shows a wonderful sense of cultural development with all the elements it entails including genetics, the Martian environment, and how they were raised (interacting with the first two). KSR does not do quite as well at developing individual characters in GM but his characterization does lend itself to understanding the motivations of individuals and empathy The long descriptions of the Martian landscape is at times hard to appreciate given that I have never been to Mars and have never studied photos of Mars' surface and landscape. I like the two places where there were small maps of Mars in the text. The development of large, complex living environments with the limited resources of those outside "the net" or the umbrella of the metanational corporations that control most of Mars is hard to perceive too. But this is easily overlooked at the sake of the larger picture that GM paints.
Rating:
Summary: Mars' greening is long and tedious
Review: Using Heinlein's classic The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as a blueprint, Robinson tries to portray a second Martian revolution in this sequel to his brilliant novel, Red Mars. Disappointingly, this volume is almost completely consumed by character and setting, perhaps trying to make up for the shortage of action, which doesn't really take off until the last few dozen pages. Admittedly, the crisply drawn characters and realistically invoked Martian landscapes were perhaps the best parts of the earlier book, but readers may remember that some of the best characters from Red Mars were killed off, and the new characters introduced are remarkably wooden and dull, while their contributions to the plot are so negligible that one suspects they were added merely as padding, and not because they needed to be there. As a result, this novel takes forever to get moving - the first 470 pages could easily be cut to a quarter of that length without any harm to the story whatever. In Red Mars the interior monologues informed the readers of the action taking place as well as providing intimate portraits of the men and women who colonized the planet. In this installment the monologues seem more like vague ruminations that don't move the plot at all (the first sentence of this review tells you more about the plot than the first couple of hundred pages of this tome), nor do they tell us anything terribly interesting about the characters, let alone make us like them. Robinson clearly had enough material here for a very short novel, and filled it out with the same techniques that worked so well for him in Red Mars, but by keeping the plot effectively a secret from his readers, he leaves us with nothing to do but admire the scenery and listen to some fairly unpleasant (even fanatical) people. While not exactly a bad book, it's a serious letdown from the majesty of Red Mars.
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