Arabella’s Mars isn’t our Mars. Where ours is dusty, dry, and dead, hers is full of trees and adventure! And space pirates! And British plantation owners exploiting native labor to make a profit! And stifling gender roles! To say nothing about a fear of nonwhite people!
For now, let’s focus less on the unsettling stuff and more on the space pirates. Because the space pirates, like fezzes, are pretty cool.
Set in a very different 1812, one in which there is an atmosphere between the red planet and ours, modified tall ships are the engines of the British Empire. The Mars-born Arabella is sent with her mother and sisters back to Earth to be groomed into a more marriageable young lady. Events, however, intervene. Before too long, Arabella is in boy-drag as a crew member on the Diana, a venerable ship of the line that has both a brown captain and a proto-computer navigator. Then the thrilling adventure really begins.
And it is a thrilling adventure, for readers young and old. Levine, who’s won a Hugo and been nominated for a fair chunk of other genre awards, crafts countless moments that are sweepingly cinematic and convey that old sensawunda. His characters sometimes struggle with having all three dimensions – but that may be more a result of the story’s Jane Austen-meets-Patrick O’Brien feel. There is a sense of propriety here that frequently only shows our characters’ stiff upper lips.
Still, there’s no doubt that Arabella of Mars is a product of a 21st century writer, one who clearly does think young women are worthy heroes in a way that Austen and her cohort did not. While there is a wedding in the end (or hints of one, at least), that isn’t Arabella’s primary goal. Instead she’s driven by a love for her family and for adventure, no matter where it may take her.
Arabella of Mars
by David D. LevineTor Books, 352 pp., $25.99
This article appears in June 17 • 2016.