AUTHOR: Andy Weir
STARTED: March 3, 2015
FINISHED: March 11, 2015
PAGES: 400
GENRE: Fiction
FIRST SENTENCE: I'm pretty much fucked.
SUMMARY: [From BN.com] Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills
him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds
himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth
that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be
gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't
have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving
environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him
first. But Mark isn't ready to give up
yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless,
dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly
insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be
enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?
THOUGHTS: After the horribleness that was my first book of the year, The Martian was a welcome relief. This is a high-energy, dramatic, and intense book. If work/life/sleep didn't get in the way, I would have read this in one setting. That said, I did stay up way past my bedtime a few nights because I could not stop reading.
The concept of this book is simply. An astronaut gets stranded on Mars, how does NASA save him and how does he save himself. That's it. That's all you need to make a fantastic read. Since I highly encourage everyone to read this book, I'm not going to share anything else. Just read it. You will not regret it.
My only qualm with this book is that all of the characters tend to sound the same. They have an equal level of sass and sarcasm, and I wish their voices were a bit more individual. But that's it! Everything else is really good.
RATING: 9/10 [Excellent!]
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