‘This is Mars, noob. Science is our god and we’re masters of the universe.”
Eighteen months after Jodi Scarfield, former hacker into the ruthless Earth government’s programs, and close friend Astrid Forbes, Mars colony brianiac, battled to prevent sabotage to the vital dome, we meet them on routine work, assigned to introduce newcomers -“noobs” – Amos and Akira to Mars. At the same time a rare emergency call goes out from a mining rover and, unthinkably on Mars, where almost every serious medical problem can be handled, as Jodi ruefully knows, man dies.
‘There’s some seriously weird snot landing on the old dome. What’s with that?’
What indeed? There follows a tale of political manoeuvring, public fears and personal rivalries, scientific discovery and dubious experiments.
‘You can’t just mutilate someone. You just can’t.’
Jodi can be described as partly bionic due to the work done on her body by the colony’s best brains when she nearly died. She tends to personalise the colony’s robots and annoys Astrid by politely requesting the bots to do tasks instead of treating them as things. But can anyone personalise, well, weird snotty stuff, assuming you could even communicate with .. err .. it?
When Astrid has a dire accident she, Jodi, Akira and Amos, pool their thoughts to make an amazing discovery. But will it be at terrible cost? As they struggle with this most serious ‘close encounter’ humanity has ever faced, they realise that someone is intent on disrupting all their efforts.
Unpinning this other-world adventure and the personal stories of Astrid and Jodi lie serious questions about what ‘human being’ even means, and what other forms life might take.
‘If this was life, then she wanted more, much more. ‘
UnEarthly by Rebecca Bloomer is published by Odyssey Books. The cover artwork is by Elijah Token. It follows up UnEarthed where Jodi first arrives on Mars. Plonk paws here for my Review on this web den. Rebecca Bloomer has also written Foley Russel and That Poor Girl and Willow Farrington Bites Back.
Where to find it: UnEarthed and UnEarthly are available all over this Earth, including, with free shipping, at Bookdepository.com , also at Amazon.
You are at Mark’s blog called Baffled Bear Books. Mark is a dark coffee tragic and bibliophile as well as the Guardian and blundering typist for Mawson Bear, Ponderer of Baffling Things and one of this bright world’s few published bears.
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