A review by mkhare
The Martian by Andy Weir

2.0

I am one of those people who found this book exceedingly dull. The author did little to convince me that Mark had any emotions or thoughts about anything besides potato-farming and Mars engineering, or that he had any kind of life before the mission. Was Mark just a robot whose understanding of relatable humanity consisted of saying the word ‘f*ck’ every now and again? It’s possible! Surely over the course of over 500 sols Mark would’ve reminisced about his past, talked about how he ended up in his current career, or even just hinted at his psychological/emotional changes during a year and a half of physical and mental near-constant isolation. No such luck!
When problems arose for Mark, I had no time to worry or stress because he was already telling me exactly how he was fixing the problem, and in minute scientific detail. Even the author’s occasional attempts to create some kind of build up of tension or impact by pulling back into omniscient third person (such as when we learnt of the birth of AL102) did absolutely nothing for me. Turns out I really need to connect to characters to connect to a story.
I feel as though I am writing like Mark now. I had better take the next few sols off to re-calibrate...