Book Review: The Martian by Andy Weir

The Martian by Andy Weir

Completed: February 19, 2014
Length: 384 Pages

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Apollo 13 meets Cast Away in this grippingly detailed, brilliantly ingenious man-vs-nature survival thriller, set on the surface of Mars.

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first men to walk on the surface of Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first man to die there.

It started with the dust storm that holed his suit and nearly killed him, and that forced his crew to leave him behind, sure he was already dead. Now he's stranded millions of miles from the nearest human being, with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his food would be gone years before a rescue mission 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 get 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. But will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

Fiction or Non-Fiction? Genre?: Science-Fiction.

What Lead You To Pick Up This Book?: Blogging reviews. I love stuff like this and everyone seems to love it so far. I had to see what the buzz was all about. Plus, Michelle told me I would love it.

Summarize the Plot: It's the future and we have got to Mars. The book starts off circulating around Mark Watney. We read his log entries after he winds up being stranded on a planet he just stepped foot on. He is thought to be dead, but fate had a different story in mind. Now he is struggling to survive and assuming death is in his immediate future. It's a real struggle! Then the people still on Earth start circulating into the story. If it was just Mark, it might be a bit boring, but all the different viewpoints add to the story. Us readers, and all the people still on Earth, are basically waiting to see what happens to Mark and doing everything they can to help him survive.

What Did You Like Most About This Book?: Man... Where does one start? Firstly, I have always been a bit fascinated with Mars. I think it is pretty exciting if we wind up there. And, this book is so believable! You can tell Weir did his research. We may not have actually got to Mars yet, but he has it very believably plotted out. The entire time we visited with Mark on Mars, I believed it. The science, the characters, etc all worked so well. I also liked the mixture log entries, for Mark, and other media for the other characters. And, the pop culture references. One of Mark's crew members was a big fan of Disco and old TV shows. It added even more facts to the story.

What Did You Like the Least?: There were a couple moments when the action slowed down, but not really struck me as bad with this book.

What Did You Think of the Writing Style?: I really liked it! It was a page-turner almost the entire time. And, like I said above, I really liked the mixture of different methods of telling the story. Weir definitely knows how to make a very readable story!

What Did You Think of the Main Character?: Mark is quite the character! For starters, he is really witty, sarcastic, and funny. I loved him and I think that is a lot of reason why I enjoyed this book so much. He made a bad situation entertaining!

What Did You Think of the Ending?: Holy page-turner! I actually got this book on audio because I HAD to know what happened and turned the pages REALLY fast as the book got going. I am not even entirely sure if I retained everything. I kind of want to hug the book and I really really hope Andy Weir can keep the momentum going and follow up with an awesome book.

Strongly recommended! You will finish it and want to read it again!