The Martian

The Martian is on lots of book lists as a must read. I took one look and saw that it was SciFi and decided to skip it. Not my thing. When I kept seeing it come up everywhere, I told myself to buck up and read the thing. So I did.

I was under the impression that SciFi was aliens, different worlds and species, fighting space creatures, or people with tall pointy ears who live in large space ships. The Martian is none of those things. What enlightenment!

It's about Mark Watney, an astronaut who gets left behind on Mars. There are no aliens. There are no creature scenes. And there are no pointy ears. The SciFi in the novel is just the unrealistic or unscientific (at least as of 2014) reality of being able to survive on Mars.

This novel is gripping. Suspenseful all throughout the book, from the first page to the final. Although I will say that the end of the novel is a bit anticlimactic. I would have liked the ending to be just as tense as the beginning and middle.

There is quite a bit of language, but it's forgivable based on the setting of life and death tension. And it's pretty mathematical and has lots of engineering in it. Watney ends up having to make a lot of modifications to his space things in order to survive. Following all of the changes and the details of what things do and how they work is a bit tedious. Not in a bad way, but in a I-need-to-read-this-a-little-slower-than-the-average-book way. It took me longer to read it since I wanted to pay closer attention to the details.

Overall, I'd recommend the book. I enjoyed it and was happy to read something other than my usual stuff.