Reviews with content warning for Cursing - The Martian

This book had me from the very beginning with the lines “I would only be ‘in command’ of the mission if I were the only remaining person. What do you know? I’m in command.” . The personality of the astronaut that was left behind is what makes this book great. Any time the story starts dragging due to (necessary) details, he comes back with a great comment. The story is written in a way that it would be a powerful story whether he is rescued or doesn’t quite make it, and I wasn’t completely sure until the point where he survived or he didn’t survive which would happen. Marked it down a little because of a lot of the F word, which I could have done without.

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robbiehuman's review against another edition

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adventurous funny inspiring tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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chrisljm's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging hopeful informative medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Ngl I was confused for about 20% of the book because of all the math, science, and engineering. My brain was working overtime to understand and imagine everything. I tried my best but I'm pretty sure I was making shit up sometimes. But nonetheless, I still appreciated the amount of science and research that went into this book and it felt incredibly realistic (but what do I know, because I will not be fact-checking at all).

Although I enjoyed Project Hail Mary much more, this was still good and I was invested in the mission to save Mark Watney as well. The humor gets kinda childish, but it still made me laugh a few times.

I will say I was curious on how Andy Weir was going to handle the narrative of Watney being the only man on Mars and trying to survive and make it back to Earth. I thought it was very much going to be a solo mission and so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that we were also going to get the pov of the crew on Earth who are also working to save Watney's life. I think this is what I enjoyed most about the book, that even though Watney is physically on his own on another planet, he's not in the fight alone because he has a whole team and crew working with him to save his life. It was very touching to see the amount of people working to save one person.

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slimywyrm's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny inspiring tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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_persephone's review against another edition

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funny tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

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atamano's review against another edition

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adventurous funny tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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oceanwriter's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging funny hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I’ve had this book sitting on my shelf for years. In that time I built high expectations that grew larger whenever I heard people talk about it. Maybe I wasn’t in the right headspace or something, but it was disappointingly only an okay read for me.

Left behind on Mars, astronaut Mark Watney keeps a log of his survival efforts. The book follows his attempts to contact his crew so he can be rescued.

I love the plot of this so much. Everything about it. What I didn’t like was the narration style. It's not even the writing style itself as it works perfectly for this situation, rather, the overall voice. I guess I had imagined something more sophisticated sounding. A lot of it was comedic, which is great, I just don’t think I was in the mood for it.

I’ve heard many good things about the audiobook which I also own. I think I will revisit the book sometime that way and see if my opinion changes.

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achay91's review against another edition

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hopeful inspiring tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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