Published: February 11, 2014 by: Crown
Pages: 369
Rating: 4/5 stars
Mark Watney had just become one of the first astronauts to walk on Mars. Then, after a dust storm causes his crew to evacuate and assume he was dead, Mark finds himself stranded on the red planet. All alone. But Mark is determined to survive. With his botanic engineering skills, he constructs a plan to grow food, rebuild damaged rovers, and get contact back to Nasa. But time, along with his food supply, is running out, and Nasa must decide how to get the first man on Mars, off of it.
I committed the sin of watching this movie long before I read the book. IT WAS OSCAR'S SEASON AND I WAS WATCHING ALL THE MOVIES, OK?! But anyways, this book filled up all the expectations of what I thought was a great movie. It was funny, clever, and even light hearted at times.
I liked how this book uses humour as a main element to it. It's not all drama, death and science fiction, but Mark had a great wittiness about him and provided comic relief to even the toughest of times. The author gave Mark a brilliant and very distinct voice, that I found myself even laughing out loud at times. It was very well done.
I also liked how this book was very easy to get through. I didn't find it boring even though there were heavy scientifical elements, and I think the humour helped with that. I definitely think that even if you're not a fan of science fiction, you would still like this book.
The one somewhat negative thing I'd have to say about this book is that I think that if I hadn't seen the movie first, I wouldn't have understood the book that much. I think that some scientific terms and problems that Mark encountered could have been hard to understand having not seen to first, so I think the movie helped a lot. It might be a bit confusing.
Overall though, this book was very well done. It was hilarious, interesting, and will have you cheering on Mark the entire way.
Have you read The Martian? What did you think?
Emily @ Paperback Princess
