This is the story of Mars. Told with a narrative and like the unraveling of a story, The Red Planet will take you through a journey of its formation, origins, it’s early life, to now and to its future.

The book is very immersive and lyrical and entertaining to read. It isn’t just interesting with its descriptive facts and informative writing but lovely to read with the way it was written. I liked the flow of this book, which seem to stream effortlessly and really worked with the style of writing.

It’s very atmospheric and easy to place yourself into the Martian world as you navigate around it’s early atmosphere, it’s craters and it’s geography.

There’s so much information in here, it’s packed to the brim with Martian geography and details and information about its formation. It would definitely need a second read for all of the writing to sink in and be remembered. It’s definitely an overwhelming subject when thinking about planets origins and creations and how it came to now but so interesting.

It’s very thoroughly and technically written and one of the best in depth accounts of Mars that I’ve read. A great read if you’re interesting in the red planet.

Simon Morden is a science fiction writer by trade (and a PhD in Geophysics) and he brings those skills to bear brilliantly on this non-fiction “biography” of our mysterious sister planet, Mars.
The red planet poses many questions - Why is the northern half of the planet significantly lower than the southern half? What happened to its atmosphere? Where did all the water go? Simon Morden answers, or in some cases, attempts to, all these questions, and more.
But this is no dry textbook - the opening chapter is stirring and evocative, describing dawn on Mars as “you” - us, the reader as intrepid astronaut? - explore the planet in a rickety rover. Other excursions await you sporadically throughout the book, on water and ice.
Morden takes us on a journey from Mars’ earliest beginnings in the nascent solar system right up to the present day and speculates on what the next 100-200 years might entail for Mars. Relating the multilayered history of Mars he lets the planet tell its own, ambiguous story. Deftly explaining the various Martian features and their colourful names, Morden quickly makes you feel like you could pass yourself off as an expert on the red planet. Chapters are short and snappy even though they relate a story across billions of years. Shorn of waffle, Morden keeps the information concise and digestible.
Thanks to Morden’s skills as a fiction writer, this book is a comfortably easy read; quite the page-turner in fact. It deals with some very complicated science but you barely notice. It is a complete(ish) history of Mars, insofar as such a thing could exist, and is a joy to read. I’ve read a lot of books about Mars but Simon Morden’s effort has become one of my favourites.