If Robinson were better at writing characters, this could have been a book I'd really love. It has an engaging sweep of a plot, it makes Mars feel more real and reachable than anything else I've read, and all the politics & ecology running through it feel at least possible, mostly plausible. But the characters are so painfully thin! Each is either a pure vessel for an ideology (and at times their arguments made me feel like I was reading the lefty Ayn Rand), or a nation profession combo caricature. By far my favourite parts of the book are the long sections in which Mars itself is the main character, because in those this flaw recedes. And the worst parts are the interpersonal drama because I could so readily slip into dropping the names altogether and just reading it as "Japanese gardener talks to Russian engineer", and so on.

Overall I enjoyed the book enough to keep reading, but found it frustrating enough that I went and read the synopses of the other two in the trilogy because I can't see myself getting around to reading the actual books. The strengths of it left me wanting to hear speculative non-fiction from Robinson, but his weaknesses as a writer of fiction undermined this book pretty badly for me.