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Elleke Boerhaave's husband is one of the wealthiest and most dangerous men in the whole solar system. She has successfully separated from him, but, to pre-empt the custody battle over their eleven-year-old daughter Patt, he has kidnapped their child and whisked her off to a land with which no Earthly nation has an extradition Mars.
Mrs Boerhaave hires Hi, a man with a very special set of skills, to perform an to fly to Mars, locate Patt, and bring her back to Earth.
Even for Hi, this is a highly perilous mission against near insurmountable odds. Flights to Mars take 6-9 months, and every steerage berth is logged, so Boerhaave will know he is coming. Boerhaave's compound, on the remote flanks of the mountain Arsis Mons, is guarded by a squad of heavily armed, highly trained soldiers, as well as every anti-intruder device money can buy. And as if that weren't enough, if Hi does manage to get to Patt, there's no obvious way to bring her back to Earth.
Which is just the kind of challenge Hi likes.
About the
Adam Roberts is often described as one of the UK's most important writers of science fiction. He has been nominated three times for the Arthur C. Clarke in 2001 for his debut novel Salt, in 2007 for Gradisil and in 2010 for Yellow Blue Tibia. He has won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, as well as the 2012 BSFA Award for Best Novel. Roberts reviews science fiction for The Guardian and is a contributor to the SF ENCYCLOPEDIA. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His science fiction has been praised by many critics both inside and outside the genre, with some comparing him to genre authors such as Pel Torro, John E. Muller, and Karl Zeigfreid.
Mrs Boerhaave hires Hi, a man with a very special set of skills, to perform an to fly to Mars, locate Patt, and bring her back to Earth.
Even for Hi, this is a highly perilous mission against near insurmountable odds. Flights to Mars take 6-9 months, and every steerage berth is logged, so Boerhaave will know he is coming. Boerhaave's compound, on the remote flanks of the mountain Arsis Mons, is guarded by a squad of heavily armed, highly trained soldiers, as well as every anti-intruder device money can buy. And as if that weren't enough, if Hi does manage to get to Patt, there's no obvious way to bring her back to Earth.
Which is just the kind of challenge Hi likes.
About the
Adam Roberts is often described as one of the UK's most important writers of science fiction. He has been nominated three times for the Arthur C. Clarke in 2001 for his debut novel Salt, in 2007 for Gradisil and in 2010 for Yellow Blue Tibia. He has won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, as well as the 2012 BSFA Award for Best Novel. Roberts reviews science fiction for The Guardian and is a contributor to the SF ENCYCLOPEDIA. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His science fiction has been praised by many critics both inside and outside the genre, with some comparing him to genre authors such as Pel Torro, John E. Muller, and Karl Zeigfreid.
122 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 30, 2024
14 people are currently reading
42 people want to read
About the author
Adam Roberts
258 books559 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Adam Roberts (born 1965) is an academic, critic and novelist. He also writes parodies under the pseudonyms of A.R.R.R. Roberts, A3R Roberts and Don Brine. He also blogs at The Valve, a group blog devoted to literature and cultural studies.
He has a degree in English from the University of Aberdeen and a PhD from Cambridge University on Robert Browning and the Classics. He teaches English literature and creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Adam Roberts has been nominated twice for the Arthur C. Clarke Award: in 2001, for his debut novel, Salt, and in 2007, for Gradisil.
Adam Roberts (born 1965) is an academic, critic and novelist. He also writes parodies under the pseudonyms of A.R.R.R. Roberts, A3R Roberts and Don Brine. He also blogs at The Valve, a group blog devoted to literature and cultural studies.
He has a degree in English from the University of Aberdeen and a PhD from Cambridge University on Robert Browning and the Classics. He teaches English literature and creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Adam Roberts has been nominated twice for the Arthur C. Clarke Award: in 2001, for his debut novel, Salt, and in 2007, for Gradisil.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 12, 2025
Jack Glass by Adam Roberts was one of my favourite reads of 2022 so I gave this one a go. Unfortunately the quality was light years away. See what I did there. Sci-fi. Space setting…
There was too much action and not enough development. The future technology possessed by the main protagonist was conveniently just there. I didn’t get how he obtained it. Perhaps I missed something. It’s like watching Darth Vader vs Luke Skywalker only to reveal the victor has a special super-tech laser, but no reason for it.
Despite this miss, I have another Roberts book ready to go. Will see soon if he is a new favourite author or if Jack Glass was just a favourite book. Please be good…
There was too much action and not enough development. The future technology possessed by the main protagonist was conveniently just there. I didn’t get how he obtained it. Perhaps I missed something. It’s like watching Darth Vader vs Luke Skywalker only to reveal the victor has a special super-tech laser, but no reason for it.
Despite this miss, I have another Roberts book ready to go. Will see soon if he is a new favourite author or if Jack Glass was just a favourite book. Please be good…
April 29, 2024
4.5 stars and perhaps my favorite Adam Roberts so far. Another clinically sterile protagonist(?) that helps highlight the fleshy humanity of every character the main character encounters. Inventive use of language and wordplay, layers of subtle to not-so-subtle social/political/environmental commentary. To me this was a better exploration of Jack Glass, but in combination with Jack Glass it feels like an exploration of survival psychology. Uses sci-fi tech tropes in a manner so schlocky it's apparent Robert's isn't using them to titillate the reader's senses and instead they function as a device for psycho-social examination more than to awe the reader.
In a sense, this book functioned as a key to starting to understand a bit better what Adam Roberts's works are. I feel more ready for Purgatory Mount and Jack Glass now that I've read this and I may go back to re-read.
In a sense, this book functioned as a key to starting to understand a bit better what Adam Roberts's works are. I feel more ready for Purgatory Mount and Jack Glass now that I've read this and I may go back to re-read.
May 28, 2024
This is my first time reading Adam Roberts. I knew upfront that this is a novella and not a full novel, but I found myself wishing that it WAS. The premise is tight-packed—a hitman takes the job of kidnapping a girl on Mars and returning her to her mother on Earth. Bit by bit, Roberts reveals more, but I wish it had been developed into a full novel. I wanted to know more about Hi's backstory, and I wasn't sure why the novella ended the way it did.
Hi is the hitman. (How does his name relate to the word "High" as in the title? Welp, it's the title cut in half...not sure what that means.) A wealthy NYC woman hires Hi to extract her daughter from her ex-husband's lavish home-compound on Mars. Hi takes the job, but he's got his own motives for doing so (not purely monetary). Probably shouldn't give any more away.
In short order, we get a sense of this vast future world and how it works on a solar-system-level. Lots of neat techy gadgets. I wanted more.
I wanted more character. Hi is like a machine, but I wanted to know WHY he was this way. The rest of the characters have strong flaws and motivations, and I wanted more from that—I wanted them to intersect and clash.
The voice...it's been a long time since I've read something written in such a nontraditional style, using second person and direct addresses. Who is this narrator?
Overall, this was intriguing for me, someone who isn't sci-fi savvy at all.
Hi is the hitman. (How does his name relate to the word "High" as in the title? Welp, it's the title cut in half...not sure what that means.) A wealthy NYC woman hires Hi to extract her daughter from her ex-husband's lavish home-compound on Mars. Hi takes the job, but he's got his own motives for doing so (not purely monetary). Probably shouldn't give any more away.
In short order, we get a sense of this vast future world and how it works on a solar-system-level. Lots of neat techy gadgets. I wanted more.
I wanted more character. Hi is like a machine, but I wanted to know WHY he was this way. The rest of the characters have strong flaws and motivations, and I wanted more from that—I wanted them to intersect and clash.
The voice...it's been a long time since I've read something written in such a nontraditional style, using second person and direct addresses. Who is this narrator?
Overall, this was intriguing for me, someone who isn't sci-fi savvy at all.
November 25, 2024
Decent, readable but not his best.
Too much : magic machine solves everything.
Jack glass is vastly superior.
Too much : magic machine solves everything.
Jack glass is vastly superior.
January 23, 2025
Incredibly entertaining
May 7, 2024
Reading this novella was a strange experience. It was more like watching an episode of an SF anthology TV series such as The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror than reading a book. Like these, there is limited character development and a restricted plot with interesting ideas, but not a full story arc. It did made me wish Adam Roberts had fleshed it out to a full novel - I could see so many more opportunities that were unfulfilled - but like the better episodes in the TV shows, as long as you take it for what it is, it's still a fun experience.
The central character Hi (a name with echoes of Snow Crash's Hiro Protagonist) is a very talented future mercenary. Taking on the job of liberating an extremely rich woman's daughter from the girl's father's fortified home on Mars, Hi achieves the impossible in getting to Mars without being discovered and killed (Roberts toys with us as to how this could have happened), and then sets about preparing for a ridiculously David and Goliath rescue.
There's a big twist part way through, and another near the end, which might feel a little close to deus ex machina, but in practice it works reasonably. As mentioned, the characters are limited, not so much two dimensional as shells - we can see some detail, but there's a lot that needs filling in. There's a fair amount of action, though, and some nice touches on Martian life and society.
This is, in the end, a quick and dirty book for one of the UK's best and more literary SF authors, but I would have liked more.
The central character Hi (a name with echoes of Snow Crash's Hiro Protagonist) is a very talented future mercenary. Taking on the job of liberating an extremely rich woman's daughter from the girl's father's fortified home on Mars, Hi achieves the impossible in getting to Mars without being discovered and killed (Roberts toys with us as to how this could have happened), and then sets about preparing for a ridiculously David and Goliath rescue.
There's a big twist part way through, and another near the end, which might feel a little close to deus ex machina, but in practice it works reasonably. As mentioned, the characters are limited, not so much two dimensional as shells - we can see some detail, but there's a lot that needs filling in. There's a fair amount of action, though, and some nice touches on Martian life and society.
This is, in the end, a quick and dirty book for one of the UK's best and more literary SF authors, but I would have liked more.
May 22, 2024
3.5 Stars
Another "fun little romp" from Roberts, but a little bigger and a lot weirder.
Another "fun little romp" from Roberts, but a little bigger and a lot weirder.
November 24, 2024
This is more of a novella than a full book and it features many of the tropes of Adam Roberts' writing. It's a heist story featuring unusual technology and leaves much unexplained. It's a fun read though.
November 26, 2024
Excellent short form pulp from Adam Roberts. Good candidate for a scifi noir genre
January 24, 2025
Short and sweet, loads of fun but also interesting and great scientific concepts that challenge the grey matter <3 loved it!
March 19, 2025
Really enjoyed this one. Entertaining and very well written.
May 1, 2024
Another odd little but interesting novella from Roberts. Worth taking a look at and certainly worth the minimal ebook cost.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews