Rating: 1 star

Carmen Dula gets to be one of the 'lucky' few who were chosen in a semi-fixed lotto of smart and non-obese people to be able to get aboard The Space Elevator! Since she is a daughter of a pair of scientists, and considering this is a trip for scientific exploration and research, this automatically put her into the drawing.

The setting starts as Carmen is pretending to enjoy her last day on Earth, while reminiscing about all that she will have to leave behind when going to Mars; no more pizza, beer or fashionable teen clothing. She will be gone from her home planet for a few years, after all. School will continue with time lags while Mars communicates with Earth via really long broadcasts through space and who could forget chores? The same as Earth's but in a fixed environment bubble on Mars.

Being a teenager on Mars with scientists as parents topped with sexual frustration, drunken debauchery with one of the big cheeses, all-out flirting with the enemy and Martian cooties only makes things weirder within this Doomsday novel. Teen drama overshadows the actual sci-fi Martian/earthling bonding moments. The only real plot is within the last twenty pages. This leaves me wanting so much more. It read like a young reader's novel; it's quick and a bit flaky but I found it too vulgar for the youngins.

Perhaps it belongs alongside the dusty Popular Science 1980's magazines that I have on my junk bookshelf.

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Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Pub. Date: August 2008
ISBN-13: 9780441015955