The Martian - Book Review

My first buddy read and my first book by Andy Weir. It is one of the highly recommended science fiction books. One of the rare books which I’ve read after watching the movie based on it.

“The Martian” is about Mark Watney, a NASA scientist who gets stranded on Mars alone and he has next to none chance of survival there. Mark is extremely smart, trained to survive in adverse conditions and extremely funny. I really loved his character who proves that you can have a great sense of humour even when you have zero chance of survival. I never felt any character so alive and real as Andy.

Andy Weir’s choice of narrating from Mark’s perspective is commendable which I found different and better than the movie. The shift in the narration gives the reader a 360 degree view of the situation from NASA’s office and Mars. Having minimum planetary knowledge and various chemical reactions, this book was able to keep me on the edge and I kept turning pages to know more about Mark’s rescue plan.

The language of the book is very clean and witty. I did find some technical details in the middle of the book a little overwhelming and I tried to skim it but it was hard not to read them.

If you like reading science fiction, this is a MUST read. Also, if you have already seen the movie, the book is a MUST read because you’ll find a lot of dissimilarities between the book and the movie.