A very late review after acquiring this one from the Hugo packet; excellent book, solidly thought through, very believable future, characters, and events. Fantastic

Emma Newman Planetfall: I looked at this series for the 2020 Hugo (Best Series) awards but didn't enjoy it. It is not an example of good honest SF and the Corey, Thompson, McDonal and Arden SF series were all much better. As it was for the awards it was not appropriate to provide a review.

Thank you for providing this book as part of the 2020 Hugo Awards Voter’s Packet (finalist for Best Series).

This is the second book in the Planetfall series, but you don't actually need to read Planetfall first as the plots are only tangentially linked (at least to begin with, I'm not sure where the series will go ultimately but I'm excited to find out!)

This one surprised me to be honest. I loved Planetfall, was taken aback by then ending, and was unsure where the author would take the story next. After Atlas has a very different feel initially. It's a detective story, and has some of the tropes you would expect for that genre, but the cyberpunk worldbuilding is fantastic and added a lot of intrigue for me. Ultimately though, there are similar themes in both books re a search for meaning, putting your faith in religious leaders etc, and again the ending packs a punch and I'm left wondering what's next for this series.

I would 100% recommend this book.

Reviewed this for Hugos 2020 series. Excellent work and I can see why it was nominated for a Hugo. Police procedural focusing on implants and a highly controlled society. Completely different than the first novel, Planetfall.

I knew before going in to After Atlas that it didn't pick up where Planetfall left off, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so different in tone and style. Planetfall was a character driven colonisation of a new planet novel, with a heavy focus on how the lies on which a society is founded back warp and twist it. After Atlas is a police procedural style novel, with much of it being focussed on the resolution of a murder case by the lead character. Don't get me wrong, it is still very character driven and had much of the same basis in examining society, religion and individuals, but it felt like a completely different series in some ways.

The change of tone and setting could have thrown me completely, but it's written so beautifully well that it never did. Set on a futuristic earth, this is still very much science fiction, but in many ways it is far more down to earth and real than Planetfall was. The technological advances were interwoven well into the narrative, yet despite the ease of information gathering, the police procedural aspects were still engaging and realistic. And the twists and turns felt far more natural in this novel; rather than Newman obviously hiding part of the story from you like in Planetfall, the progress of the investigation allowed for information to be disseminated far more fluidly.

And once again, the characters shine in this novel; Newman does a fantastic job of creating multi-layered characters with flaws and weaknesses. Carlos in particular is a deeply troubled character, which is completely understandable when you consider his back story. I really enjoyed the way this explored not just his motivations though, but also that of the religious sect he grew up in and to a lesser extent, the police bureau that owns his contract.

All in all, this is a multi-faceted police procedural science fiction with excellent characters, a narrative that twists and turns in unexpected ways and intricate world-building. I surprised myself by enjoying it more than I enjoyed Planetfall, despite being a little thrown to begin with by the change of tone and setting.

I almost decided not to continue with this series and I am glad I didn't. A scary but almost too realistic near future world looming in the background, while the main plot basically a detective story. I can't help but comparing this with Asimov's Robot series, but Carlos was a far more interesting (and sympathetic) figure than Elijah. What I loved most about this book are the little details of world building that played organically within the story and actively added to the tension right till the very end. It started quite slow and methodical, but, let's just say if this is a musical passage, it would be a crescendo. Definitely will continue to the next books.

Thank you for the chance to review the full series in advance of the Hugos! It's a stellar series and one of my favorites to date.

"After Atlas" is the second novel in Emma Newman's Hugo nominated four-book Planetfall series. Although the first novel in the series focused entirely on events surrounding a 1,000 person human colony on a planet in some other solar system, this novel is essentially a detective story in a dystopian future where the protagonist and his father are dealing with abandonment issues related to the mother/wife joining the original Atlas expedition thus leaving husband and child behind. The final chapters of the book fortunately strengthen the ties with the first book in the series. While reading "After Atlas" I was frequently reminded of (dark) masterpieces such as Blade Runner and Altered Carbon. Other dystopian concepts that were fundamental to this book include economic slavery, sexual exploitation, mind control, cults, injustice, (bad) parenting, evil governments, evil corporations, evil corporation-governments, emotional mental health issues, mass murder, and the rarity of gourmet cuisine.

If you are looking for a dark, mildly disturbing, but engaging dystopian murder mystery, then "After Atlas" is for you!

After Atlas is the second book set in Emma Newman's Planetfall universe (which began with, naturally, the novel Planetfall). I use the phrase "set in" there because the book isn't a direct sequel - it takes place in the same universe at a time that I think is before the events of Planetfall but in a totally different place: Earth, the planet the characters in Planetfall had long left behind. It's also sort of a different genre, with the plot taking the form of a scifi dystopian mystery for much of its runtime, which makes it very different from Planetfall in some ways. I'd liked Planetfall a bit and was curious to see where the series would go from that point, so it was inevitable I'd get to this sequel at some point.

And After Atlas is....interesting - like its predecessor it has a compelling narrator who makes it hard to put down and the book even has some similar themes, but its themes are far more cynical than its predecessor. It's also far more dystopian in its future setting, featuring a world in which corporate entities have replaced governmental ones, with certain people being literally owned by such entities for many different forms of indentured service. And the book's character work isn't quite as well done as in Planetfall, with it being devoted a bit more to ideas than that book was, which makes it a little less effective as a sequel. Still, it's certainly a fascinating read that captured me from the beginning and I'll be back for book 3.


---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------

Detective Carlos Moreno has never been free his entire life. His mother abandoned him to go to the stars on the ship Atlas and this resulted in his father joining a prominent cult: The Circle, known for its charismatic leader Alejandro Casales and for its anti-technology attitude: with members known for not even being "chipped" with the internal communication technology with which everyone in the rest of the world functions. Carlos' escape from The Circle was a series of bad choices that have left him the property of the Noropean Ministry of Justice working off his debt by performing one investigation at a time....with every moment of pleasure Carlos takes only being added to his debt. But those moments are Carlos' own and his choice to make, something he has resigned to live with now that the past is behind him.

But when Alejandro Casales is found brutally murdered in a hotel in England, Carlos' background with The Circle results in Carlos being assigned the case. But the case isn't just painful for Carlos due to the bad memories it presents, it also carries with it political entanglement like Carlos has never seen before: as all three major corporate entities - Norope, Europe, and USGov - are breathing down Carlos' neck at all moments of the investigation, searching for an answer.

Carlos' investigation will call into question all that he knows about the cult he once escaped from - and perhaps will make him question far more about the society he thinks he's grown to know. Why would anyone kill a charismatic cult leader, even one so world-renowned as Alejandro? What was Alejandro doing in England and why are all three governments so suddenly interested in him? Carlos' one obsession has always been trying to figure out puzzles, but this puzzle's resolution will change everything.....

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If you couldn't tell from the plot summary, After Altas is a very different novel from Planetfall. Planetfall was set on a strange other planet, and while both novels feature similar types of technology - talking via chips implanted in one's head, printers that can print materials and food, etc. - After Atlas is instead set on a very recognizable if dystopian Earth. Moreover whereas Planetfall was a story about humans reacting to alien things and the mysteries that resulted, After Atlas is framed and indeed spends nearly all of its runtime as a scifi dystopian noir. It's in more than a few ways a story that traffics quite heavily in some classic tropes: so you have bureaucrats trying to obstruct the investigation and prematurely close it, a potential governmental conspiracy, a nosy journalist, a jilted lover....etc. This makes it all the more familiar as a kind of story than Planetfall honestly.

And yet all these familiar tropes are put together in ways that are very different than usual. A classic noir story might have Carlos - the investigator - have a background with the victim like this, but Newman layers more on top of that by adding in that Carlos hasn't escaped his past even before the case came to him: he's almost literally a slave to the government, with any pleasures literally being added to his "debt." The people who in other such noirs would wind up being sinister actually wind up here not being so - definitely not what they appear, but not necessarily sinister. And despite the noir feel, there is absolutely no moment in which Carlos feels any romantic or sexual inclinations towards anyone so that's never a conflicting point in the novel. So despite the familiar tropes in the setting, the book constantly subverts how they're used, keeping everything fascinating throughout.

And Newman's setting for this mystery is dystopian to its core and very cynical but rather compelling. Like a lot of settings, you have multinational governments replaced by corporate entities (Norope, Europe, and USGov), and yet those entities don't behave too much differently than governments except that they're just a bit less constrained by moralities - which makes sense, since if given the power why would they behave too much differently? Debt here has become a literal thing for many people such as Carlos, who literally cannot make any wrong steps - or steps for his own wellbeing - without adding to his indentured servitude. And vast sums of money are still what can make individuals incredibly powerful in this world, to chilling effect in the story. So this is a really cynical dystopian future...but one that's also not too far off from the directions our world is today, which makes it hard to disbelieve.

That said, while the mystery and setting are compelling, the characters involved in this story are less so. Carlos is the only character we really ever get to know - the only other major characters whose stories we seem to know have those identities turned around by the plot - and while he's a strong lead as a man whose tragic past was followed up by more and more tragedies, there isn't really much to him besides the struggling noir investigator you see in other stories. He works, but he's not particularly special in any way. And the rest of the characters are largely archetypes - the one character who kind of isn't spends most of the book on the outs with Carlos, and as a result is cast to the side. And the villains are kind of cardboard cutout level evil. This is not a character focused book, which keeps it from being truly tremendous and memorable all the way to the end.

Still the ending packs a punch as the story ties itself back in to the world of Planetfall, to incredible effect. It's an ending that the reader will likely see coming about two chapters before the characters do, but it still hits hard. So yeah, After Atlas, despite not featuring as interesting characters as Planetfall, got my attention and I'll be back for book 3 in this series, to see how and if things are followed up.

This is a book I am accessing via Netgalley for the Hugo nomination packet. Due to this, I will not be reviewing this book via Netgalley at this time.

I got this as part of the Hugo Awards Voting Packet. I love this series! I look forward to reading the author’s next book.

Thank you so much for providing this book as part of the Hugo voting packet. When I have read this book my review will be posted to my blog, Goodreads and retail websites.

This is not really a sequel to Planetfall, and can be read without reading the first book

40 years after the departure of the spaceship Atlas (the story of its passengers was told in Planetfall), the people of Earth await the opening of a time capsule left by its captain, and speculation about the contents -- and how they might help the failing planet -- runs rife.

The main character is the son left behind by the leader of the spacecraft Atlas' colony expedition, and he has tried to make a life for himself on a dystopic future earth, despite spending decades under a cloud of uncertainty and resentment from the rest of the world because of his lineage. The future technology described here, and the political organization of the earth's countries, are quite interesting, and the author builds the stakes nicely as the plot moves along. As with the first book, the ending seems a little abrupt; nevetheless, I found it a worthy read.

It's been far too long since this came out, and I have no excuse -- especially since I originally had an ARC. It's a follow-up/companion to Planetfall, but it doesn't rely on it too much and can be read alone. Personally, I think I'd prefer to read it after Planetfall, though. That novel gives a lot of context for this one, even though it doesn't share any characters or anything beyond the idea of the Atlas mission. It doesn't even feel like the same genre, even though they fit perfectly together; this is more of a detective story, with a whole mystery that needs to be unravelled.

This one didn't connect with me on the visceral level that Planetfall did, because one of the reasons that book got to me was the description of the main character's anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. That's something I'm familiar with, much more so than with Carlos' circumscribed existence -- even though that is evocatively written too.

All in all, I wish I'd got to this sooner, and I'd love to read more in this world and find out what happens, particularly to Dee, Carlos and Travis, but to all of them. My only criticism is that the end felt like it happened so fast -- that last chapter covers so much time!

[Link live from 12/04/2017.]

After Atlas by Emma Newman is a companion novel to Planetfall, which I previously reviewed here. You don't have to have read Planetfall to read After Atlas — both books stand alone entirely — but some background/historical context for After Atlas will be clearer sooner if you've read the other book first. Even if you spend most of After Atlas trying to remember the names of the Planetfall characters before caving and checking when you're near the end, as I did. Also, it should be possible to read the two books in either order.

Gov-corp detective Carlos Moreno was only a baby when Atlas left Earth to seek truth among the stars. But in that moment, the course of Carlos’s entire life changed. Atlas is what took his mother away; what made his father lose hope; what led Alejandro Casales, leader of the religious cult known as the Circle, to his door. And now, on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of Atlas’s departure, it’s got something to do why Casales was found dead in his hotel room—and why Carlos is the man in charge of the investigation.

To figure out who killed one of the most powerful men on Earth, Carlos is supposed to put aside his personal history. But the deeper he delves into the case, the more he realizes that escaping the past is not so easy. There’s more to Casales’s death than meets the eye, and something much more sinister to the legacy of Atlas than anyone realizes…

Planetfall wasn't exactly a cheerful book, so I picked up After Atlas because I was in the mood for a depressing read. Boy, did it deliver in that regard! Set on a dystopian Earth forty years after the colony ship in Planetfall left, After Atlas follows a detective assigned to a murder case. Carlos the detective, also the first person narrator, is owned and enslaved by the Ministry of Justice and contractually forbidden from revealing that fact. Because of the NDA included in his contract, most free people don't believe slaves like him exist, which makes for some interesting social interplays (and bitterness).

A large part of After Atlas is a murder mystery, with the victim the leader of a cult Carlos escaped when he was sixteen. The cult insist on having Carlos be the investigator and, of course, the situation brings up a lot of difficult memories for him which also serve to fill in the reader on his backstory. The story of the cult and of Carlos's connection to the departed spaceship end up being key components of the story, along with the murder itself.

Newman paints a pretty bleak picture of humanity in this series and especially in this book. Honestly, I was surprised at how bleak some parts were and I recognise that's not for everyone. But I really enjoyed the book and the story and the issues it raised. I will definitely read any more books that come out in this series, although I'm not sure more are planned. I recommend After Atlas to fans of dark SF (I wouldn't call it horror, though) and to anyone who enjoyed Planetfall, although it's a pretty different read in many respects. I've enjoyed all of Newman's books that I've read, but I should warn you that if you've only read the Split Worlds series, this series is very different, so be warned.

5 / 5 stars

First published: November 2016,
Series: Planetfall series, book 2 of 2 so far (but both stand alone)
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley