The Martain – Andy Weir

Published: 11 February 2014
Publisher: Crown
Pages: 384
Format Read: Audible
Duration: 10h 59mins

Blurp:

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?

Thoughts:

Not going to lie, even though this book is classed as high-or hard sci/fi, certainly because all of the sciency things that Mark and the people of NASA get up. The unbelievability of survival on Mars was something I wanted to believe right from the start. What we have here is a book that can either hit it’s Mark(mind the pun), or miss the objective very much like how the Apollo did all those years ago(this is not intended as a joke of any kind, no offence meant to those involved).

The character that Mark portrays from the opening of the book right too the end was consistant. Mark is a specialist in what he does and not just some stowaway that just happens to survive at all odds. There are too many books out there that has a person just surviving because of a series of very fortunate events. In Watney’s case he had a few things that were left on Mars by his crew that he had to make work in order to keep him from dying. He did so with trial and error and I was delighted when things worked out as well as when things did not go according to plan. There was one scen in the movie that captured this very well. I am a bit pissed off with certain decisions that were made so will not be talking too much on that front. I liked both equally, but I think the book won the battle between favorites in this case. Watney also came over as near obnoxiously optimistic, I say that, then I also contradict the hell out of myself as I actually enjoyed reading his thought processes. In a very grim situation he manages to pull through on things I could easily see myself just throwing the towel at and dying with no hope of survival. For that I thank Weir, for keeping a dire situation. I am glad Milou told me to check this out and equally glad I got to “read” it on Audible as the narrator did a gread job of capturing that possitivity. The fact that the guy reading it to me is a massive nerd just put that much more personality to the book that I can not imagine myself imagining reading it by myself. So thank you for that Will Weaton.

I do not know what else there is to say that has not been said already on other reviews of this novel. In my books, Weir did a great job at entertaining me. I gave this a 4 out of 5 stars on GR. I’ll recommend it to people that are not too put of by swearing and 70’s refrences(there are quite a lot that even I missed), but can also say that depending on your mind set this could either be a horrible read or massively enjoyable, I for one am happy that it was the latter for me. The opening of this book grabbed me from the start and I enjoyed it till the end. I am not sure if Hail Mary follows on this, but I am interested in checking it out now. I should actually try more space survival novels in future, I might have found another genre that intrigues me.

See you on the next review!