After thirteen months in space, the Aquila Mission's crew has returned safely to find Earth in peril. Rising sea levels have already claimed hundreds of the world's coastal communities, and now major cities—New York, Dubai, Shanghai—are being threatened. To make matters worse, Shiva, a hundred-kilometer-wide dwarf planet, has been knocked out of the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto and is headed toward the inner solar system. Astrophysicists estimate a one-in-fifty chance it will collide with Earth in 2079. Humanity cannot afford to gamble with extinction.
All eyes turn to Mars, the red guardian that has watched humanity evolve, and an international settlement mission is planned for 2035. The veterans of the Aquila Mission—Coby Brewster, Ellie Accardi, Vik Ivanov, and Abby Denton—are chosen to spearhead the expedition. Their mission: lead a crew of twenty-one people, including their families, to Mars to prepare for the arrival of Colossus-class settlement fleets.
But even on a new planet, establishing a human utopia seems an impossible task. Coby, Ellie, Vik, and Abby are astronauts, not politicians, and with time running out and survival uncertain, the last thing they need is an unstable psychopath moving among them…
Arcadia Mars is the thrilling and speculative sequel to Doug Cook's sci-fi hit The Aquila Mission, and is a must-read for space buffs and sci-fi fans alike.
NATIONAL SPACE SOCIETY REVIEW -- https://space.nss.org/book-review-arcadia-mars/