Review of The Martian by Andy Weir (2012)
Bottom line: Highly recommended for sci-fi fans and/or survivalists.
Rating: Strongly Recommended
Blurb:
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.
Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.
After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.
Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first.
But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?
Review:
Wow, that’s a long blurb. I won’t say much about the story, since it’s all pretty much covered. I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It’s sci-fi meets the good old-fashioned survival story. The character of Mark is completely realistic and charming, and I like that in this survival story, it’s actually believable how the main character has the knowledge and skills needed to survive.
There are a lot of f-bombs in here, but frankly, it fits his character and the man has been stranded on Mars. Some interesting stylistic choices are that it’s mostly told through Mark’s official NASA log/journal, which works much better than I would have thought, and Weir gives a LOT of detail and numbers on how exactly Mark is going about survival, including oxygen input, water consumption, etc. I kind of loved those things since it gave a realistic feel to the proceedings, and I’m a numbers nerd anyways. I asked my husband (NOT a numbers nerd) who’d liked and recommended the book to me and he said he just kind of ignored them.
There are a lot of secondary characters, and at first I had a hard time keeping track of who was who. However, as the story progressed, I became impressed at how he was able to fill out the characters in just the few quick strokes we get from Mark’s journal, or the glimpses we get as we watch them try to bring Mark home.
This is a really fun book, and the best contemporary sci-fi I’ve read recently.
Get it: Amazon, Barnes and Noble
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