Speed dating in Space

This book was so good, once I had picked it up I couldn't put it down until I had finished it - at a very ridiculous hour of the night/early morning. Daniel Hahn has done a beautiful job of translating this book and the writing style is lovely, flowing so seamlessly that it is hard to believe it even is a translation.

Acsension follows Léonor as she is sent with 11 other teens to colonise Mars. In this version of the future, the US President has reduced the country's debt by selling off or privatising assets like museums and more importantly for the purposes of the story: NASA. With NASA sold to the highest bidder, the trained astronauts who spent their lives preparing to go to Mars have been replaced by inexperienced but beautiful teenagers. This is in aid of the company filming the mission and turning the journey into a reality TV show in which the 12 teens must couple up and marry as they arrive on Mars.

The characters were so interesting and I'm excited to learn more about them in the next book. Each of the 12 contestants has a secret from the others which made the story all the more compelling. If the characters had been one-dimensional and more like the stars of reality TV we see today, I don't think this book would have been anywhere near as good. 

The one negative I have to say about this book is that it did spend a fair amount of time switching to the perspectives of people on Earth and I didn't find these chapters quite as enthralling as the speed-dating shenanigans that were going on up in space. It was crucial to the plot to understand some of what was happening on Earth but I just felt like it could have been condensed a little and the other contestants headed to Mars would then have had more time to be explored as characters. I know there are more books to come though so I'm hoping that there is more focus on the other characters as the story continues.

Overall, I highly recommend this book and I can't wait to read the next instalment of Léonor's story