Of course I signed up right away, filled out their forms and picked my very first book. The Martian by Andy Weir. I registered to get it as an e-book and had it on my kindle within 20 minutes. Naturally I started reading it as soon as I could.
I finished the novel on Monday night and I was very happy with it- to the point that I had already mentioned it to family and friends before I even finished reading.
The Martian is about an astronaut, Mark Watney, who while traveling with his space crew is abandoned on the surface of Mars during a dust storm. Through his knowledge and expertise, as a botanist and engineer, Mark must figure out a way to survive until the next mission arrives, almost four years away.
A good chunk of the book is written in first-person as Mark documents his trials, problems, successes and journey. It has a good mix of input from Earth's perspective, the NASA workers and his fellow crew-mates.
I really enjoyed all of the scientific aspects of the book- the calculations he made, learning about the different pieces of equipment and what really goes into space travel. I'm not a space expert so I can't say how accurate that all is but it definitely sounded good and kept me reading. As a reader it was nice to have a sci-fi book that was somewhat realistic. No aliens, or way-off-chart issues- everything seemed as if it could be a situation we might see a fellow human in one day (except I hope not because that would suck!)
The book does have a large amount of profanity (I would be cursing too if I was stuck on Mars by myself), so if that bothers you I wouldn't pick it up- but if you like a good adventure story, then this comes highly recommended by myself.
Enjoy!
*Note: I received this book for free in exchange for a review- all thoughts and opinions are of my own*
