A review by midici
The Martian by Andy Weir

4.0

Yesterday I decided to treat myself and buy a book. Instead of buying any of the books on my "to-read" list, I grabbed The Martian. I got home from work, sat down with the book, and did not get up again until it was finished. I could not stop reading this book. There were a lot of technical details, some of which were explained well, others were not. There was some literary quirks I didn't like (saying "remember when..." every time to remind your reader of what happened previously was one of them). The fact that we rarely got a glimpse of a really depressed or angry Mark, despite his situation, also threw me off a bit. I would have liked to see him deal with his own attitude as a potential issue instead of just fighting off physical and technical problems.

But none of that mattered.

I was so engrossed in the story I could not stop. I needed to know what would happen, how he would tackle every new issue that popped up, the reactions of all the people back on Earth and of his team mates, safe on the Hermes ship. This was an engaging, surprising, realistic(ish) survival story of a man trapped on Mars. It's great.