No real spoilers here...
The Martian
A. Weir
A book that is sort of a remake of Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Well, not really, but the novel The Martian captivated me as an adult, every bit as much as the movie Robinson Crusoe on Mars did all those years ago when I was 10. The book starts right off with a catastrophe that maroons the protagonist on Mars for what is all but a certain death sentence. Unconscious, stabbed in the abdomen by flying debris, and losing breathable air in his suit; he is all but done for. His crew-mates on the aborted Mars mission assume that he has died, and make their escape before a sandstorm dooms them to certain death as well. Well, he survives. And boy, does he. A brilliant botanist and a skilled technician, he is armed with just enough equipment, supplies, know-how and survival instinct to make a run at survival.
Most of the book is written in the first person in the form of a daily log recording summarizing what happened on a particular day. Later in the book, it breaks into a narrative to describe what others - his crew-mates, NASA - are doing, and in some cases, the events that lead to a crisis for the protagonist. As readers, we are drawn in and immediately identify with him; the intensity of events keeps us engaged through the whole book. It was very hard to put the book down and go to sleep at 1am.
I found that I would peek ahead to see if the format was changing to narrative mode - which might signify another event that would further threaten our hero's survival. I cannot remember a book that grabbed my attention so fiercely, and so adamantly refused to relent. I was so worried that the end would be revealed to me that I refused to watch the trailers for the upcoming film version of the story.
The technical details are very well thought out, and not a single event or setback felt manufactured or even hinted at being implausible; it all rang so true. The long hours of boredom were punctuated with humour and little bits of terror.Btw, speaking the Movie, go watch it now, if you haven't seen it. And those trailers for the movie? Go watch all of them too; you'll be pleasantly surprised...
