The Martian by Andy Weir

Title: The Martian

Author: Andy Weir

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Broadway Books

Publication Date: February 11, 2014

Source: Edelweiss

I have been putting this review off.  Why?  Because my opinion kind of falls on to the unpopular side of things.  As far as I can tell at least.  But it only falls that way sort of...so that is good I guess?

There had been so much hype around this book, then the movie, and then the movie and the book that I figured I really should read it.

I should have known better.  The amount of hype I was exposed to for this book raise my idea of it so high that there was no way that it could have possibly reached it.  What surprised me most though was that it only start reaching out for it sometimes.  Other times I was completely bored and rather unimpressed.

When I picked up The Martian, like with most books I read, I had no idea what it was actually about.  This shouldn't surprise those of you who follow my reviews, but to the new people that are reading this - I usually go in blind.  A cover pulls me in, the authors name, etc etc etc.  I occasionally skim the blurb on the back, but more often than not I don't read the blurb until I am actually reading the book and find myself wondering "what is this book about?"

The Martian is about a guy, Mark Watney, who gets left behind on Mars through no fault of anyone's and has no way to get off the planet and back to Earth.  Worse yet, he only has so much food and he has no way to communicate with anyone.  In short, he is stuck.

Interesting premise.  However, with this premise apparently you get to read a whole bunch of scientific like stuff and there is a lot of it.  I found all of those parts dreadfully boring.  Like put down the book boring.

Thankfully for this book, I very rarely give up.  Also there were bits and pieces that I liked reading.

I found Mark Watney to be a pretty humorous guy.  His jokes were pretty well places and often enough that it would pull my interest back in.  A lot of his joke references were lost on me though.  They were shows from the 70s and what not that I am just unfamiliar with.

Maybe if I had been familiar with these things, I would have liked the book a bit more.

Mark is apparently an extremely smart guy.  Very lucky (and convenient) for a guy who gets stuck up on Mars.  I guess you do have to be pretty smart to be an astronaut, but honestly, sometimes I thought his intelligence was a bit....too much.  Almost unbelievable at times.

I did finish the book, and I didn't hate it.  But I didn't love it either.  It wasn't what I thought it would be, but it was decent enough.

My Rating

3 Stars

This review is based on an eARC provided by the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and honest review.

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