The Martian by Andy Weir
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I did really enjoy this book, in fact I read it in one sitting … much to my frustration … as it was 4:15AM by the time I finished it. Obviously a real tension-building sense of peril with a race-against-the clock motif, but the twist is that the clock is 18 months long and the peril unfolds equally slowly. Will my food grow? Will I have enough water? Plus there are the constant, immediate challenges, like falling down a cliff or getting blown up in a gas leak to entertain us in the meantime. Our hero’s response to each obstacle is usually level-headed and methodical in keeping with the “What will kill me next?” philosophy of NASA training, and the book admirably succeeds in the crucial task of making everything feel plausible as opposed to similar stories (such as “Fall of Moondust”) which unfold like a sequence of contrived logic puzzles. The book is scientifically accurate, probably to a fault, as many of the explanations for what’s happening involve long-winded technical explanations … and math. It’s all very well-explained and certainly nothing will go over the layman’s head, but it does slow the storytelling down in a couple of places. Not faulting him though, I would have been dead on page three, and obviously as I don’t have the technical knowledge to be on Mars in the first place, I never once saw the obvious solution coming three chapters before it arrived. (Bonus.) The main character, sort of a Bear Grylls meets Bill Nye guy, mercifully has a smart-alec personality that keeps him from getting boring, but the defensive sense of humor and “mission log” storytelling with no inner monologue keep you from really investing in him. These are only a minor flaws, really, as this is truly a great story that I highly recommended to anyone who likes a good “ultimate survivalist” adventure.
