Book Review: The Martian

The Martian

Reading Andy Weir's The Martian can give you the ultimate nerdgasm! Picture yourself as an astronaut stranded on Mars. If that doesn't excite — or rather frighten — you, I don't know what will. This thrilling premise, set in the near future, makes way for an epic tale of survival on the Red Planet, a story of grit and determination when faced with insurmountable odds, testing and pushing the limits of what you can and what you can't. Even more fantastically, the science of it all makes perfect sense (even if it may go over your head at times) and sounds convincing as hell!

Moving on to the not so good stuff, the writing is awkward, and while I do get that the bulk of the narrative is a series of first-person log entries, Weir's technobabble gets tiresome after a point. Partly because, he goes overboard portraying the hero's cool persona. We get it, he is nerdy, resourceful and he can fix things all by himself, but I also wish the author had explored a little bit about who he is and his emotional state at having been cast away and deserted by his crew — unintentional of course (the lesser said about the other one dimensional characters, the better). All we know about him at the end is that he is The Martian.