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A review by ja_hopkins
Losing Mars by Peter Cawdron
4.0
First off, I quite enjoyed the concept of the book and thought the story itself was pretty good, although it is almost two separate stories. Comparisons to The Martian are obvious, and there is a bit of Interstellar in there as well.
The writing is fine, but is too repetetive and labourious. There is no way anyone reading this will ever forget that Mars has a thin atmosphere - it's mentioned on most pages. Similarly, NASA are very careful with astronauts and take safety seriously. There is also just too much explanation - orbits, suits, spacecraft design etc. are all described in incredible detail, multiple times. I don't dislike the explanation in some cases, but the constant attempt to inject a sense of wonder and amazement becomes irritating. Everything is amazing, weird, odd, counterintuitive and on ad infinitum.
This probably makes it sound like I did not enjoy reading the book, and it is fair to say that as I was reading it crossed my mind a few times that it was frustrating. I would say the second half did not work as well for me, but it was perfectly acceptable. But... I wanted to read on, especially in the first half. I wanted to know what happened, so from that perspective the author is successful.
I mentioned comparisons to The Martian - I think Andy Weir's book is superior, and the main reason, I suspect, is an editor. I think trimming some of the repetition to remove perhaps fifty pages or so of description might help. That said, I'd recommend it still, so that suggests the author is onto something.
The writing is fine, but is too repetetive and labourious. There is no way anyone reading this will ever forget that Mars has a thin atmosphere - it's mentioned on most pages. Similarly, NASA are very careful with astronauts and take safety seriously. There is also just too much explanation - orbits, suits, spacecraft design etc. are all described in incredible detail, multiple times. I don't dislike the explanation in some cases, but the constant attempt to inject a sense of wonder and amazement becomes irritating. Everything is amazing, weird, odd, counterintuitive and on ad infinitum.
This probably makes it sound like I did not enjoy reading the book, and it is fair to say that as I was reading it crossed my mind a few times that it was frustrating. I would say the second half did not work as well for me, but it was perfectly acceptable. But... I wanted to read on, especially in the first half. I wanted to know what happened, so from that perspective the author is successful.
I mentioned comparisons to The Martian - I think Andy Weir's book is superior, and the main reason, I suspect, is an editor. I think trimming some of the repetition to remove perhaps fifty pages or so of description might help. That said, I'd recommend it still, so that suggests the author is onto something.