Review: The Martian by Andy Weir

I should probably start off with being honest. I had no intentions to read this book. At all. I kept seeing the reviews pop up and people recommending the book. “Ah, this book is great! It’s about a guy that gets stranded on Mars. You should go read it!” I wasn’t interested. It sounded ridiculous to me. I mean, a guy on Mars, really? I was so wrong.

My interest in the book was caused by the lovely movie trailer. (There are a few things in the trailer that are kind of spoiler-y, but if you’d like, you can find it here.) After that, I was hooked. I really wanted to read it. It looked amazing, engaging, and epic. And it was; it really was.

If you have missed all of the reviews, the book, and the movie trailer, let me expand your horizons, and I’ll tell you what it’s about. The Martian essentially chronicles one astronaut—Mark Watney—that gets stranded on Mars during the Ares 3 mission. The other astronauts left during an emergency evacuation. In the midst of this evacuation, Watney’s suit was hit, and the rest of the crew thought he was dead. Watney, now alone on the planet, must find a way to survive in the hopes that NASA will eventually come rescue him.

Maybe I’ll post a customer review. “Brought product to surface of Mars. It stopped working. 0/10.”

The one aspect that makes this book work so well is Mark Watney himself. The guy is just such a great character. He is the kind of person that you root for; to me, it makes sense that the whole planet of Earth was brought together in an effort to save him. He is resilient, funny, and he makes the best out of the situation he is in. He does have his moments of self-doubt and failure, but he gets back up every time. I believed in him, and I know that this character will stay with me for a long time.

Not only was Watney a great character, but the rest of the cast of characters were just as good. You could feel their stress about trying to rescue him, their cheerfulness when something when right, and their fear when things went terribly wrong. I particularly enjoyed the scenes in which we get to see what is going on at NASA on Earth. It was such an interesting dynamic between all of the people that worked there.

The whole book was just so believable. I cannot stress that enough, and I don’t think that there is a way for me to describe that to you. Everything is backed up by legitimate science. Well, I’m not a scientist by any means, but it all seemed very realistic to me. One drawback for me: while all of the science aspects were explained well, they were so detailed. At times, the story became a little bogged down with all of the descriptions.

Even more, there are pieces of the novel’s narration—the parts that are third person omniscient—that felt awkward and out of place. Every time that this type of narration interrupted Watney’s account, I felt jolted out of the story. I know that these pieces of narration were used to create an atmosphere of impending doom or what have you, but it just didn’t feel like it belonged in the novel. Lucky enough for me, these excerpts were few and far between.

I won’t spoil anything, but I want to say just a little bit about the ending. I don’t know how I feel about it. On one hand, I am perfectly content with what happened; on the other, I want a little bit more information.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and I only had a couple of issues with it. I would recommend it if you are looking for a funny, captivating science fiction novel. If you have a problem with excessive language though, it may not be the right choice for you.