Review: The Martian

I was very curious to read The Martain by Andy Weir when I saw previews for the movie, because, let's be honest, books are almost always better than movies made from books.  The story is about Mark Watney, who gets left behind on Mars, and keeps a log of his time stuck there.  He has no contact with Earth, or with any other people, like his team, and has to use what it left behind from the failed mission to try to survive.  He knows another mission is planned to come to a different part of Mars in four years, but know he does not have enough food or water to last that long, or a way to get to where the next mission is planned to land.  Luckily, he happens to be a botanist and mechanical engineer,  so basically he is the person with the best chance to survive in these circumstances.  While the book is largely written in first person point of view, as he is keeping a detailed log of his days and activities, it also switches things up by including the perspective of the people trying to save him, both his team, and NASA and their helpers.

I really liked this book.  Mark's entries were filled with humor, so it wasn't nearly as depressing as you would think a book about a guy stuck in space would be.  It also had enough twists and such, that just when you thought you had figured out if he would survive or not, you suddenly weren't sure anymore.  My only complaint would be that there was a lot of scientific jargon, which is rather unavoidable when he's explaining how he's trying to make water and such, but still was a little hard to follow, and got boring pretty quick.  I am now interested in seeing the movie, to see how it compares! I would recommend this book to anyone interested in science, it has a lot of different types included- nutrition, botany, engineering, chemistry, and more.  However, I'm not interested in science, so that's not a requirement. Those who enjoy sarcastic humor would also enjoy this book.


I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.