Mars Evacuees (Mars Evacuees 1)

by Sophia McDougall

Paperback, 2014

Status

Missing

Call number

823.92

Publication

Egmont (2014), 336 pages

Description

Twelve-year-old Alice Dare is one of 300 seven- to sixteen-year-olds evacuated to Mars to attend school and train as soldiers, safe from the war with Earth's invading aliens, the Morrors, but when all of the adults and robots mysteriously disappear, the youths must survive on their own.

User reviews

LibraryThing member iansales

I don’t as a general rule read YA or children’s books, being neither a teenager (AKA young adult) nor a child; but I’d seen this mentioned approvingly by friends, the setting seemed like it might appeal, and that really is an attractive cover. As it is, I was expecting something a little

closer to hard sf, rather than the actual story of hand-wavey aliens invading Earth and returning the planet to an ice age to better suit their needs and a young teenage girl who gets a little closer to the war than planned. There are some nice touches throughout, and McDougall’s prose is very readable, but it’s a story put together from a pair of pretty common plots – first, kids go all Lord of the Flies in a Martian base when all the grown-ups disappear; but then protagonist, Alice Dare (named for Dan?), and brainy friend trek across the surface to another base in search of adults, encounter an alien child and so learn about them – and everyone lives happily(-ish) ever after. I’d cheerfully recommend it to kids – a sf novel for children featuring female characters with agency? Of course I would – whether they’re fans of sf or not. Which is, I suppose, what it’s all about.

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LibraryThing member jimll

This is really a young teenagers book (probably 11-13 year olds?) but I ended up reading it on a train as my librarian better half had a review copy on her bookshelf. Having said that, its not bad - I've read worse "adult" sci-fi to be honest. The plot is about an ongoing war on Earth between

humans and alien invaders called Morrows. Yet the heroine is shipped off world to a new colony on Mars to be trained as a future fighter. Things don't go to plan though, and there's a nice twist at the end.

Some of the technical details won't satisfy the "sci" part of "sci-fi" fans, but on the whole its relatively believable for a non techie sci-fi story for children and adults willing to suspend disbelief/knowledge. It would probably make a pretty good film, and could be quite gritty and dark in places.

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LibraryThing member rivkat

I get the Smekday comparisons I’ve seen—there’s an alien invasion, a juvenile protagonist on a journey, and a lot of humor contrasting with the huge, traumatic events. Here, our protagonist is sent to Mars to train with the military and to be safe from the aliens who’ve invaded Earth and

started turning it colder and colder. She makes friends with a young genius and a young James T. Kirk type. It’s very good—think Heinlein juvenile with diversity as a default instead of weird conservative politics, or any rollicking space adventure without the distractions of sexual attraction.

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LibraryThing member vivirielle

When the war with the aliens continues to go badly, Alice Dare is sent to Mars to train for the army with a few hundred other children. One day all of the adults disappear, leaving the children unsupervised and forming groups fighting for control of the resources left to them. Alice and her friends

leave their base on Mars to find answers to what happened to the adults. Their space ship is destroyed by mysterious creatures called space locusts that no one has seen before. When they discover one of the aliens attacking earth and take him captive, they learn that those creatures are why the other aliens have been attacking earth. The kids and their captive use their ingenuity to survive the unpleasant atmosphere of Mars and tell the grown-ups of both species about the space locusts in time to join forces and save the solar system from being eaten.

Both funny and scary, this book will entertain readers looking for younger science fiction. Although the science isn’t all accurate or believable, it has a science fiction feel. At times it feels like Ender’s Game mixed with Lord of the Flies, but there are also a lot of funny moments and the goldfish shaped robot helps ease the tension even in the most stressful moments of the book. It has more swearing than most books this age as the characters are trying to survive on an inhospitable area. The voice of the main character could be fun and cute, but sometimes information is glossed over or not given in detail and the voice seems to be a way to avoid thinking about things too complexly. The characters' role as misfits that manage to get along well when they have a similar goal is one of the strongest points of the book. In spite of its weaknesses, the humor and strength of the characters will make this book fun for a wide variety of readers.

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