Book Review: The Martian by Andy Weir

Funny, sarcastic, well written, a bit technical at times but an all around gripping and compelling story about one man’s quest to survive on Mars. Yes, I will admit that The Martian may not be everyone’s cup of tea for sure. It is a science fiction book in every sense of the word and if you are interested in astronomy especially and have some basic chemistry / physics knowledge or just a love or curiosity about science, you will really enjoy this book. My rating is ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Martian was a real page turner for me and I really found it hard to put the book down 📖 The story was captivating and I always wanted to know what was going to happen next. I felt like I was stuck on Mars with Mark and he was telling me how he was gonna get us back home to Earth 🌎

The book is written from three main point of views, one is that of “The Martian” Mark Watney who speaks to us via journal entries and the other is from the point of view of the NASA team here on earth and the other astronauts who formed part of Mark’s team 🛰 🚀 🛸 I enjoyed reading the story from the all sides but I particularly enjoyed the dry humor of Mark in his journal entries. He is obviously a brilliant persons, with an upbeat (most of the time) personality and a dry sense of humor which is kind of what you need in a situation like this. He also was a great problem solver and he tried to overcome every stumbling block as it arose.

Although, Mark Watney is the main protagonist in this story the supporting cast, the members of the NASA team back on Earth and the other astronauts who were part of his team were a diverse group of characters who really added to the story and I enjoyed seeing the situation through their eyes also 😚

If you love a good adventure and you are a slight science nerd like myself, you would really appreciate this book. Whenever you see Mars in the sky at night, you will also can’t help but think about Mark Watney and how he survived 560 sols on Mars all by himself . Wow. Yes, I know it is not a true story but still!🙃 (PS: One sol which is a solar day on Mars is just slightly longer than an Earth day, by about 39 minutes).

The Pics below of Mars are courtesy NASA’s Mars Exploration Program https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/images/index.html

As an added bonus, there is also a movie based on this book. It was released in 2015 and starred Matt Damon. I just finished the book and I think that I will watch the movie this weekend. Have you read the book or seen the movie? What did you think of it? 😉

Thanks for reading my blog post.

Much Love

Celly