From Publishers Weekly
In this unexceptional and somewhat slow-moving follow-up to The Martian Race (1999), Benford sends Julia and Viktor, the first astronauts to land on Mars, off to Pluto to investigate a number of strange phenomena. The solar system's coldest, most distant planet appears to be heating up and developing an atmosphere. Stranger still, another expedition has discovered life on Pluto, in an environment where it shouldn't exist. Benford has always been fascinated by the possibilities inherent in extraterrestrial life, and he takes advantage of his own scientific specialty, plasma physics, to create some extraordinary creatures. The competently constructed plot details the unraveling of a series of mysteries via the application of scientific method spiced with credible intuitive leaps. What fails to satisfy, however, are the characters. Julia seems too perfect, while her husband, Viktor, is little more than a nice guy with a funny accent. The second exploratory ship's captain, the daughter of the billionaire who financed Julia and Viktor's original Mars trip, comes across as a Paris Hilton with an advanced degree in biology. Her scenes with Julia, which involve stereotypical assumptions about how powerful women must interact, can be painful. Hard SF fans will find this an adequate read, but Benford has done far better work in the past. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
With their death-defying exploration of Mars and groundbreaking discovery of primitive Martian life, Viktor and Julia have become history's most famous astronauts. Now, after a series of exploits deemed reckless by space agency bureaucrats, they are being pressured to retire and spend their remaining days handling agency publicity. Fortunately, the Mars mission's primary financier, billionaire John Axelrod, has the political muscle to reassign them to an ongoing Pluto mission before it's too late; but the trip has a price tag: rescuing Axelrod's zealous astronaut daughter, Shanna, from a calamitous exploration of Pluto's frozen methane surface. By the time Viktor and Julia reach the outer solar system, however, Shanna has not only set foot on the planet surface but also established contact with a walruslike native creature known as the zand. Together, the three astronauts must forge a tenuous union to unravel the mystery of Plutonian life. Working from a thrilling premise and with original, speculative science, Benford, a premier practitioner of hard sf, is in top form. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
The Sunborn FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
In this unexceptional and somewhat slow-moving follow-up to The Martian Race (1999), Benford sends Julia and Viktor, the first astronauts to land on Mars, off to Pluto to investigate a number of strange phenomena. The solar system's coldest, most distant planet appears to be heating up and developing an atmosphere. Stranger still, another expedition has discovered life on Pluto, in an environment where it shouldn't exist. Benford has always been fascinated by the possibilities inherent in extraterrestrial life, and he takes advantage of his own scientific specialty, plasma physics, to create some extraordinary creatures. The competently constructed plot details the unraveling of a series of mysteries via the application of scientific method spiced with credible intuitive leaps. What fails to satisfy, however, are the characters. Julia seems too perfect, while her husband, Viktor, is little more than a nice guy with a funny accent. The second exploratory ship's captain, the daughter of the billionaire who financed Julia and Viktor's original Mars trip, comes across as a Paris Hilton with an advanced degree in biology. Her scenes with Julia, which involve stereotypical assumptions about how powerful women must interact, can be painful. Hard SF fans will find this an adequate read, but Benford has done far better work in the past. Agent, Ralph Vicinanza. (Mar. 2) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
A novel about the discovery of anaerobic life on Mars? Trust physics professor and Nebula Award winner Benford to pull it off. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Sequel to The Martian Race (1999), in which scientists Julia Barth and her Russian-accented husband, Viktor, pioneered Mars and discovered life, the vast, anaerobic, enigmatic Marsmat. Twenty years later, Viktor's accent has not improved, but with colonization in full swing, Julia and Viktor ponder the Marsmat's odd properties. Somehow, its vast, subterranean, far-flung parts can juggle magnetic fields, maybe in an attempt to communicate; it might even be intelligent! Mission sponsor John Axelrod's persistent efforts to exploit commercial opportunities, such as the Mars Effect, Julia and Viktor's unexplained youthfulness, remain a minor annoyance. Meanwhile, an expedition to Pluto to investigate that planet's inexplicable (and relative) warm-up (it's still utterly frigid), captained by Shanna, Axelrod's prickly, headstrong daughter, has discovered life. Subsisting on chemical and electromagnetic energies, the huge, blimplike, intelligent zand-with whom Shanna can communicate, thanks to the miraculous, near-intelligent, universal-translator software called Wiseguy-didn't evolve on Pluto. Moreover, the zand fear attack from the mysterious and deadly Darksiders. Julia and Viktor, sent in a state-of-the-art fusion-powered spaceship to assist, plunge into the usual rivalries, jealousies, and clashes of ideas and approaches. They do discover that the Darksiders are machines that arrive on huge snowballs called "iceteroids," steered in from the Oort cloud. They decide to take both theirs and Shanna's ships out to investigate-and precipitate the first interplanetary war. Benford-here, as always, at his best when portraying scientists discussing ideas and hammering out hypotheses-offers up someabsorbing scientific speculations, but stretches them to utterly far-fetched extremes.
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