Jon Batson

An interesting premise rather breathlessly laid out, but for the Mars buff, a little something different.

Simultaneous and planet-wide earthquakes have affected Earth and Mars. An American expert on Mars is looking through her telescope at the time and sees the aftermath on Mars: an enormous artificial structure uncovered from the sands in which it's been embedded. She heads to Washington to bring attention to this proof of intelligent life on Mars (at some point in history) and makes the show more acquaintance of the book's main character and primary narrator: a Congressional aide with the ability to touch someone and discover how that person has been involved in his past lives. You may wonder what the Martian structure and the psychically-aware aide have in common, but that is the core of the plot.

The aide, in particular, is a very well-drawn character, but others I sometimes found interchangeable, and a couple (the aide's boss, a very stupid and greedy politician, for instance), are pure stock. And there are some very unlikely scenes that would never happen in real life: for instance, those in which the aide gets involved with world-famous astronomers who take his theories extremely seriously. This could be fixed if the reasons were fleshed out, but instead there are many small scenes which are hurried through and, voilà!, a fait accompli. The story wraps up pretty well. If you're a fan of Martian fiction, give it a try. Available in paperback or on Kindle, including Kindle Unlimited. show less