The Martian

by Andy Weir

[inlibrisveritas]

The Martian is one of those reads that progressively gets harder and harder to put down. Everytime you think you’ll get to a moment good enough to pause you are either too enraptured to notice it or something happens and stopping is no longer an option.

Our focus is on astronaut Mark Watney, a man who has been stranded on Mars by himself and must figure out a way to survive if he ever wants to have hope of being rescued. I loved Mark. He’s funny, sarcastic, and brilliant in a “I’m impressed his ideas are actually working” kind of way. Since most of this book is told in log entries we get to see the unfiltered Mark as he struggles, succeeds and fails. The secondary characters are all fantastic as well and I enjoyed the moments where the book took a break from the log entries and showed us what was happening back on Earth or in the space shuttle Hermes with his crew. There are even moments where the book takes on a sort of omnipotent view of the situation and we get a piece by piece glimpse of what is coming up, adding to the tension.

I was surprised when I read that this was Andy Weir’s first novel, and now I know I need to see more from him. It’s rare to find a science-fiction thriller like this! It’s rooted in reality and everything within it’s pages are within the realm of possibility, and every bit of the panic that it induced came from a very real place. In fact I had moments where the tension was so thick that I was starting to feel incredibly anxious and had to stop reading for a few minutes. I’m all for books with science in them and while I can’t say for sure everything in this book is scientifically accurate I do know that a good majority of it is and I really appreciate the time and detail that the author put into making sure it was as believable as possible. I also loved the fact that this book didn’t add in a ton of extra elements to the plot, it’s simply about survival. Mark is up against a lot in this book (the environment, the odds, himself, and the loneliness) and I was worried here would be some sort of odd twist thrown into the mix, but Weir kept on the path he laid out and it was utterly perfect.

If you are a science fiction fan then I have no idea what you’re waiting for! Go get a copy! If you’re just on the lookout for incredibly thrilling and tension filled books, then put it on your list! And if you’re curious about it because of the upcoming movie, then I urge you to go read it before it comes out! You never know if a movie will do the book justice but this one is definitely worth reading ahead of time.