Well, let’s get the obvious out of the way. If you didn’t find this book literary enough and are one of those people who call themselves a “writer” on their Amazon/Goodreads/whatever profiles and yet have no books of their own published on Amazon/Goodreads/whatever, I’d like to make a humble suggestion. First, please spend a few years writing a book, submit it to a few hundred agents, get rejected, publish it on Amazon, sell 30,000 copies in 3 months, sell rights to a major publishing house, sell movie rights and get Matt Damon to star in a movie based on your book. After you’ve done all that, do come back and complain about this book not being literary enough.
The Pros:
- The right amount of geekery. The amount of research Andy Weir must have done is simply staggering. At the end of the day, I don’t know (or care) whether the science behind Mark Watney’s numerous calculations is correct. But it sure sounds plausible enough to maintain the reader engrossed in the novel rather than question the possibility of events at every turn.
- Humor/Human element. To put it simply, Mark Watney is awesome. He’s real. He’s a very smart guy who happened to draw the short straw and is now trying to figure out how to deal with it. He’s not Superman. He’s just a regular man who’s trying to beat almost impossible odds. He works his ass off, he jokes, and he bitches. He’s brave but not in-your-face Captain America brave, which makes him even more likable.
- Great pace.
The Cons:
- Too many disasters. Occasionally things work as they are supposed to. Disasters add to the tension, but when you add too many, they start to become predictable.
- (Minor spoiler). Change of voice leading to a disaster. It threw me off the first time when Wier started describing events leading to an airlock failure. After that, every time that voice popped up, it was like a flashing line on a teleprompter: Disaster is imminent! Disaster is imminent!
- Secondary characters lacked. I think the original crew was a missed opportunity to create some really good characters. How they were dealing with the trauma of leaving their crewmate behind could add to the emotional part of the story.
Verdict: The Martian is superb. No, it’s not perfect, but its strengths are outnumbering its weaknesses by a great margin.
All in all a great read. 4.9 stars.