Red Dust
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Product Description
Product Description
Mars, 600 years in the future, is dying. Five hundred years after the Chinese conquered the Red Planet, the great work of terraforming is failing. The human-machine Consensus of Earth had persuaded the AI Emperor to follow the Golden Path into a vast virtual reality universe, leaving behind an ungoverned planet swept by hunger riots and the beginnings of civil war. Enter Wei Lee, a lowly itinerant agricultural technician: rock 'n' roll fan, dupe, holy fool - and unlikely Messiah. After stumbling on an anarchist pilot hiding near the wreckage of her spacecraft, he's drawn into a revolutionary plot that has been spinning for decades. With the help of a ghost, the broadcasts of the King of the Cats, a Yankee yak herder, and a little Girl God, Lee travels across the badlands, swampy waterways and vast dust seas to a showdown at the summit of the biggest volcano in the Solar System. Not even the God-like Consensus can predict the outcome of his struggle to define his own destiny . . . Epic in scope, Red Dust's spectacular, fast-paced story brilliantly brings to life the planet that has captured our imagination like no other.
About the Author
Paul McAuley's first novel won the PHILIP K. DICK AWARD and he has gone on to win almost all of the major awards in the field. For many years a research biologist, he now writes full-time. He lives in London. You can find his blog at: http://www.unlikelyworlds.blogspot.com.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this book years ago, and only recently stumbled across it on Amazon - and I was a bit surprised at the pummeling it seems to be taking. I've always had a soft spot for this novel. So what if it's 'just a quest novel' (whatever that means)? It's pacy, and fun. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it can ruin stuff too; looking back, I recognize that the plot meanders, and the ending has a whiff of a deus ex machina about it, but at the time I really didn't notice. And the reason I didn't notice that the journey meandered was this: I was too busy looking out the window. I was drinking in the view of the book's real star: Mars like you've never seen it, where the human spirit stirs against the combined forces of a bitter struggle for survival, the corrupt vestiges of Chinese communism, and the smothering statism imposed by humanity's children. Don't get me wrong - there are novels where the backdrop is everything, and the characters and plot waft in the breeze, so flimsy are they. But this is not that novel. This is more like a Hollywood blockbuster - the characters are a bit over the top, the plot is kinda crazy, but you can really see where they blew the budget.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Despite the science fiction setting Red Dust is basically a quest, with hero Wei Lee seeking to achieve his destiny and discover what happened to his long-lost parents. The story takes place on a Mars colonised by the Chinese, and McAuley depicts this transplanted oriental milieu with style and considerable gusto. There are some striking scenes (Matrix-like fights and Yankee whalers hunting on seas of dust) yet there is not much depth to this imagined world, and Wei Lee is rather too passive to be a convincing hero. Faults notwithstanding, I enjoyed Red Dust and found it an entertaining read.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Putting the shared universe of his first 3 novels behind him, Paul McAuley's first standalone novel unfortunately turns out to be a badly structured mess. It's a tale of revolution on a partially terraformed Mars, seen through the eyes of itinerant worker Wei Lee. There are plenty of interesting ideas and moments in this book, but they completely fail to come together into a satisfactory whole. The book flies past virtual reality afterlife, Elvis rescued by aliens, Western pastiche, sand ray hunting and plenty more without ever exploring in depth what this world of Mars is like. It becomes impossible to have any feeling for the lead character or interest in his story - as with the lowest form of fantasy quest tales it becomes clear that Wei is the 'Chosen One' who can bring about revolution on Mars. Wei is never in charge of his own destiny; he's always journeying at the behest of shadowy characters that never quite reveal their intentions. A series of encounters with a mysterious assassin seems to be trying to add some energy to the proceedings, but as it soon becomes clear that these encounters will all fizzle out until a final showdown these set pieces quickly become boring.
A total lack of focus here makes Red Dust McAuley's weakest novel to date - a novel with a plot difficult to understand and characters impossible to like.
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