there are some nice little moments of beauty here, but for the most part they're lost amidst the sheer drudgery of the barren landscape, shallow violethere are some nice little moments of beauty here, but for the most part they're lost amidst the sheer drudgery of the barren landscape, shallow violence, relentless racial slurs, and intensely unlikable (and somewhat homogenous and mostly undevelopled) characters. i get that all of that is sort of the point of the book, and i've read books that do a similar thing and manage to execute it well, but this wasn't one of them. b-o-r-e-d...more
just when i thought a particular horror trope had been exhausted and there was nothing new to be done with it, along comes this intelligent, creative,just when i thought a particular horror trope had been exhausted and there was nothing new to be done with it, along comes this intelligent, creative, and gripping novel replete with a complex cast of characters who feel like actual people inhabiting a fully-realised world. brilliant. just hope the film adaptation does it justice!...more
oh boy, where do i even start. firstly, it's revealed gradually over a series of mission logs just how infuriating, smug, and unlikable mark watney, toh boy, where do i even start. firstly, it's revealed gradually over a series of mission logs just how infuriating, smug, and unlikable mark watney, the protagonist, is. every incident is just a chance for the book to demonstrate what a wonderful and "funny" guy he is. i didn't care about him surviving, and yet i had to read pages of explanation about how he cleverly thinks himself out of scenario after scenario. he's also apparently psychologically impervious to the strain (to put it lightly) that being stranded alone for hundreds of days on an alien planet would have on an actual person, and just chugs along making "jokes" (like sending boobs to NASA, the absolute LAD) and outdated pop-culture references. thus the book wastes a prime opportunity to crank up the tension/interest.
secondly, the book really squanders its location. mars, a beautiful, barren, uncanny, ancient and unknown planet is completely overshadowed by the towering smugness of mark watney and the amount of energy the book expends trying to make you like him.
and then the final straw was a gay joke. at being told food supplies are being sent in a probe named after isis (the goddess of rainbows, among other things), he replies "so a gay probe is coming to save me". nope nope done bye....more
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