Not a bad trip

The Martian by Andy Weir.

It immediately reminded me of "The Flight of the Phoenix" a 1964 book by Elleston Trevor, which I found impossible to put down, in that it uses the inescapable and unrelenting logic of maths and science to create tension and excitement. The difference here is that we have just one man so he does not have to deal with the personality clashes of a group of people and we also have the perspective of those back home. This really helps move the action along and gives us a break from the bleakness of Watneys existence on Mars, ironically the one thing he himself is desperately seeking.

Being trapped on Mars creates a number of issues and that’s putting it lightly. I could never have conceived how many issues one might face and the fact that I would have been stumped at problem one shows why I am writing this and not in Space J…or an engineer. Weir does a good job at keeping the reader engaged with the main character and there are many moments of genuine humour. Watney is very well written, and it is his part of his mission profile, that helps us spend so much time with his voice, in that he lifts a situation, looks for the positive way out, cracks a joke now and then. If he was a deadbeat it would have been much harder to wish him good luck in his mission to get off mars.

If you can look past the numbers and theories that the normal reader could not possibly understand and just go with it, this is one great ride. Also massive kudos to the cover, which is very simple, but absolutely does the job.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.

Martian Press Release http://crownpublishing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/The-Martian-Press-Release.pdf

Author Bio - http://www.randomhouse.com/author/184612/andy-weir