http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1541312.html

I think the Mars books are among the best examples of sfnal world-building, combined with politics, that I know; without needing a detailed knowledge of Martian geography in advance (the maps supplied are adequate for me) I got a tremendous sense of the scale and size of the planet, of the vast enterprise of making it livable, not a new Earth, but a new Mars. And Robinson raises questions about the political management of the environment and the wider economy on the new planet which certainly have resonances for our own time and place.

Green Mars probably works best of the three as a standalone novel. We start with Nirgal, a viewpoint character from the second generation, growing up with a group of colonists in hiding since the 2061 catastrophe, experiencing the planet's puberty as he experiences his own (the key scene of the opening section is where he and the slightly older Jackie make love in the open air, once the temperature and pressure are high enough that they can do so). The book is very much the story of an underground movement plotting revolution - the usual excitements of sleeping with the enemy and subsequent capture, allies from Earth (a Soros-type billionaire who gets involved), plotting and planning the political and ecological principles of the society they want to build, and then seizing the moment for change when it arrives: the key scene at the end is Maya's taking command of the rebels from Jackie at the moment of victory, though a key symbolic moment is the flooding of the city of Burroughs by saboteurs and the evacuation of its population, made possible by changes in the Martian atmosphere, leading to a procession of people walking out their bubble and into a new world, which is another striking image.