The Martian by Andy Weir

I have just finished reading The Martian by Andy Weir.  This had been hanging around on my shelf for a while but I never quite got round to reading it, just not my usual fare. I am so glad I finally did.

This is a true rollercoaster of a book full of drama, humour and despair in fairly equal measure and with the lead character of Mark Watney, the NASA astronaut left for dead on Mars, Weir has created someone believable, just a man struggling to survive an extraordinary situation.  The book is a great mixture of Robinson Crusoe, American television show MacGyver, the obvious Apollo 13 along with, for me at least, a slightly uncomfortable undertone reminiscent of The Truman Show.

Strangely, despite the near future Martian setting making it pure science fiction, this tale does not seem at all far-fetched.  It is to all intents and purposes a novel of the human spirit and our remarkable tenacity when it comes to surviving extreme adversity.

Though very technical for much of the book - to be expected as Watney is after all a scientist stuck on a distant planet - the scientific aspects are well explained.  Nothing is so complex that an ordinary person, such as myself, cannot follow it.  However I will say that sometimes these explanations do go on a little too long at times.

I really enjoyed the way Mark Watney is written.  He is a man you can get behind. I found myself laughing along with him and his gallows humour and despairing with him the few times he loses heart.  Watney is not the perfect, improbable hero of other science fiction that I have read which, to me at least, makes the book much more approachable. The situations he finds himself in are believable and the MacGyver/Blue Peter-esque fixes he has to come up with are intelligent and plausible - no instant overblown remedies to be found here.

I can also say that I have a new and healthy respect for duct tape and the humble potato. Those of you who have read the book will understand and I don't want to spoil it for those that haven't so that's all I'm going to say.

Weir brings in the other characters necessary to the story in a balanced way showing the situation from all sides - NASA and its politics, suppliers and their problems, the crew struggling with the loss of their friend.  I found the daily special news report and the constant surveillance a bit unsettling but I realise this is exactly how it would be.

Overall a gripping, fun and tense read that I found impossible to put down and that I would highly recommend.