Marsbound etc ★☆☆☆☆

Joe Haldeman’s slightly Mars-o-centric trilogy — Marsbound, Starbound, and Earthbound — was okay, then weak, and finally awful. I barely made it through the droningly pointless Earthbound. I was angrily “flipping” (virtual!) pages at the end, scanning for something, anything of interest in the story. Despite the first book being “okay,” I can’t recommend it, now that I know the trilogy isn’t really going anywhere. Taken as a whole, this is the most disappointing science fiction reading I’ve done in years.

Odd, additional scathing note: this trilogy also had by far the worst case of excessive expositional review of “the story so far” I have ever seen. Chunks of books two and three are not only devoted to reviewing the previous novel, but even previous events in the same book. So tedious.