The Empress Of Mars

By Kage Baker, "The Empress Of Mars". Best Science Fiction book I've read this year! Baker writes a series of novels featuring "The Company" which I haven't warmed up to yet, but her short story collections shine and "Empress" is a kick-ass novel that's all about what I really like in the genre. I'll paste in some stuff from PW below, but hey, check it out!

From Publishers Weekly-

Baker seamlessly expands her 2004 Hugo and Nebula–nominated novella of the same title into tale of nonconformist survival. Widow Mary Griffith and her daughters relocate to an oddly anachronistic Mars, a world dominated by the badly run British Arean Company. Declared redundant by BAC, Mary establishes the first bar on Mars, which prevails despite the moralistic disapproval of her former bosses. Her customers are colorful characters who exist at the periphery of Martian society, from shyster Stanford Crosley to would-be space cowboy Ottorio Vespucci. Mary's family, friends and neighbors struggle to survive economic setbacks, the inhospitable climate and BAC's hostility to all forms of eccentricity. Though the international politics are sometimes threadbare, Baker's tale of individualists battling enforced conformity is a worthy evolution of her novella and will especially appeal to longtime science fiction fans.

Review-

“Most writers’ alternate universes are fun to visit, but Kage Baker’s is one I wouldn’t mind moving to: the Barsoom of Edgar Rice Burroughs . . . seen through the eyes of a writer far more poetic, vastly more scientifically literate, and with an infinitely superior sense of humor. Even as science-fictional taverns go, the Empress of Mars is memorable, a joint I hope I’ll be able to return to many times.”
--Spider Robinson, author of Very Hard Choices

"For my money, The Empress of Mars is the one to read.”
--Mike Resnick, author of Starship: Rebel

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns on all of Mars, the Empress is the one to visit. Let's raise a round to Kage Baker.”
--Jack McDevitt, author of The Devil's Eye