YMMV / Red Mars Trilogy

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Loads and loads to go with the large cast. Given how many different points-of-view are presented and many with unreliable narration, this is one of the pleasures of reading it.
  • Phyllis Boyle is an in-universe example. In The Martians Nirgal meets her friends and lovers George and Edvard, who describe her as a noble hero who tried to avert the war of 2061 and keep the peace afterward, rather than the villain or fool she is presented as everywhere else.
• Heartwarming Moments: After Sax is captured by the metanats in Green Mars and the underground—Maya, Nadia, Nirgal, etc—discuss the difficulties of rescuing him and the fact that information on their whereabouts will certainly be forcibly extracted from his brain, one of them concludes the discussion with "Besides, it's our Sax."
• Moral Event Horizon: Phyllis, when she sides with the metanats and helps them hunt down her fellow First Hundred. She has Arkady Bogdanov and the entire city he's based in immolated by raising oxygen levels to an extreme and igniting it. It's actually debatable that that was her idea: she clearly knew it was going to happen, but may not have had the power to prevent it. It goes without saying, YMMV. The question of whether Phyllis is a monster or is merely a fool who made a deal with figurative devils is something of an in-universe YMMV for the First Hundred (one among many).
• Too Cool to Live: John Boone and Arkady Bogdanov.

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