THE MARTIAN (Novel)
MARK WATNEY MY GOOD FRIENDπ
Spoilers
Here is the chronology of my The Martian experience:
Watched the movie
Found out about the novel and that its very fun to read
Plan on buying the novel but kept putting it off because i still have loads of books i have yet to finish
A friend of mine got into Matt Damon and tweeted about getting the novel
I traded books with them and got my hands on The Martian novel, using the added pressure of having to return it to make me finish it faster.
Read book
Finished book
Yearn to read it again and also watch the movie again
ITS JUST SO FUCKING GOOD!!!
The novel starts off with Watney's-actually im gonna call him Mark because we're tight like that-Mark's log, explaining his situation and how he arrived at that situation. The logs are in first person so we get to read exactly everything he thinks about or thinks to write about. Part of what makes the book so fun is Mark's personality! its gets explicitly described by the psychologist, how he's like the glue of the crew (ares 3) due to this ability to diffuse tension during...tense moments and get along with practically everyone. That aside, he's also very determined and a skilled problem solver (as all astronauts should be). Having Mark have such an outgoing personality, cracking jokes even when he had no idea how to get back to earth or talk to anyone, the logs become very entertaining to read.
After a while, one of the chapters start off in third person, this was now from the POV of the people on earth. I find the earth sections to be way easier to read as they included way less martian technobabble and instead had character dialogues and their interactions. I think Andy Weir did a really good job at characterizing all of the different characters on earth. Despite there being quite a few of them, i had an easy time seeing all of their different personalities and how Beth had a significant character development, becoming way more confident as the book reached its ending.
CHARACTERS
Mark Watney: Man. It is truly an honor to be able to read his logs. Ofcourse as i have mentioned at the start, Mark is really fun to read because despite his damn hopeless situation, he keeps cracking jokes and solving problems by doing whatever to some machinery that needs to be tinkered with. But that does not mean that he's always a cheerful guy in his logs. At some points in the story, he feels very lonely, he feels like he's not gonna make it. He's also somebody that cares perhaps a bit too much for his crewmates that he dismisses his own needs. This side of him doesn't show up explicitly too often but once you've seen it, you may realize that it's always been there, and that a lot of his goofy talk in his log is to keep himself sane.
I don't know what else to say really cause all i wanna say about the other characters is that they all have a unique trait about them. Their own ways of talking, their own motivations, their own way of thinking. Awesome stuff.
WRITING
Most of what i wanna say about the writing i already wrote down in the start... Andy Weir knows how to mix in both very accurate astronomy and space flight stuff with very engaging characters and story. It was just genuinely so, so fun to read. I can't wait for Project Hail Mary.
The fucking ending got me so bad. He put his all into surviving in mars on his own. Having to fix every problem (mostly) himself, starving and getting himself hurt, going kind of crazy due to not having human contact for so long, believing that his life is... not all that worth to spend so much money into just to save because he is just one soul. And in the end, his crewmates, the people in NASA and CNSA did what they can to help him come back home, despite how many times he thought he would die alone in the cold, red, planet. I fucking teared up man.
