Review: The Martian

The Martian by Andy Weir
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Mark Watney is stuck on Mars!

An accident leaves an astronaut abandoned on Mars, for an unknown amount of time. What will he do to survive?

The story is mostly told by Mark's diary entries, which are sometimes horrifying (he's alone on Mars!), sometimes too "smart" for me (lots of chemistry talk), but very often hilarious. He has a great sense of humour, even in a horrible and unforgiving situation. He makes the best of the worst possible situation.

Mark is a botanist, who gets to try tilling the Mars soil for the first time, he makes me feel like a total failure, for only having barely figured how to grow simple things! Truly, he is an inspiration to those of us who want to have gardens ever. He also has to take on the role of a computer guy, a mechanic, a self-serve doctor, everything his crew was meant to do, but now he needs to figure it out on his own, sometimes with or without aid from back on Earth.

We also get to see how NASA reacts when they find out he isn't dead. I'm left wondering how close to their real operations the reaction was, it was really well done!

Some points really make you worry about what will happen next, which are rough when you're tired but want to just keep reading!

I know it's already out as a movie, but I really do recommend this book for anyone, even if you don't have a PhD in all the sciences, ha!

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