This was really really good. I loved the writing style, it was really engaging and kept me invested in the story. The layout of the chapters and the difference in perspectives made it feel so much faster and made it more interesting to read. I liked the characters, particularly the main one, Mark. The way he's written just made me want to root for him and his survival. The only reason why this book isn't 5 stars for me is because I found myself realising that I hadn't comprehended anything that I had read when it got really technical, particularly when explaining the mathematics or technology. With that being said, this is definitely a book I would recommend for someone that is into sci-fi, survival, space and STEM. And even if you aren't into these specific things, I would still recommend this book.

I have seen the movie first, and I wonder whether I would have liked the book better if I hadn't. Since the movie is a pretty faithful adaptation, all the key plot points are essentially the same. And I kept imagining the main character as Matt Damon. 

The book is about an astronaut named Mark Watney, who gets left behind on Mars, because everyone thinks that he's dead. Surprise, he's not, and now he has to survive. 

I'm not an expert, but the science behind this book sounds plausible. It's a bit technical, but not so much that it would greatly impact my enjoyment of the book. This book is told mostly as log entries, but other types of narration are also used, and I think the narrative choice makes this a faster and easier to read. 

The main character is mostly likeable, and since he narrates the story using logs, we aren't actually inside his head. On the other hand, we don't get to see his loneliness, fear and desperation that much, but it makes the tone of the book lighter. 

However, I do have a few criticisms: almost all of the characters in this book banter with each other, so it would have been nice to have the characters have different voices. One character is German, and he uses stereotypical exclamations like: Ja! and Mein Gott! And there's one throwaway mention of rape I could have done without. 

I've heard some reviews about Andy Weir's other book Artemis that say it's misogynistic. There are some hints of it in this book too, but not so much that it would affect the overall experience. I'm planning on reading Artemis as well, so we'll see. 

Fun at first but after a while I wished I had just watched the movie. First the good points—super imaginative format, really creative on the problem solving front, and well-researched.

But. There’s no character development to speak of - many of the characters are flattened to a single character trait that becomes their entire personality. The author does not seem to be interested in psychology at all and more into the science problems and survival…which would sure make for a fun space movie, but dragged as a story, for me anyway.

The whole book was a series of life-or-death scenarios that Mark would invariably get out of the very next day through a combination of wild ingenuity and unbelievable good luck. Every single time. Which made  the pacing and outcome of each scenario increasingly repetitive and predictable. As this was originally published as blog posts, makes sense, but really reads like an exercise the author was entertaining himself with—what crazy problem can Mark deal with today, and how will he solve it? Each one was interesting individually and would be great as a blog post but as a book, ehh. 

Last issue I had was with Mark's entries themselves. There were weird tense issues at the beginning that threw me off, and he would go back and forth between using very technical language, but then explain something really obvious like what CO2 stands for…I was wondering who his log entries were actually intended for? Surely not just NASA, surely not just laypeople…I keep coming back to this book feeling like a fun science-writing experiment for the author that doesn’t entirely work as a novel.

Ok one more…Mark became increasingly unlikeable for me….juvenile jokes became his whole personality (funny at first, but got old), and there was a casual use of some language related to s*xual assault that kicked me right out of the book. 

Sigh…definitely fun at times, but not nearly as good as I had expected.

Ngl I was confused for about 20% of the book because of all the math, science, and engineering. My brain was working overtime to understand and imagine everything. I tried my best but I'm pretty sure I was making shit up sometimes. But nonetheless, I still appreciated the amount of science and research that went into this book and it felt incredibly realistic (but what do I know, because I will not be fact-checking at all). 

Although I enjoyed Project Hail Mary much more, this was still good and I was invested in the mission to save Mark Watney as well. The humor gets kinda childish, but it still made me laugh a few times. 

I will say I was curious on how Andy Weir was going to handle the narrative of Watney being the only man on Mars and trying to survive and make it back to Earth. I thought it was very much going to be a solo mission and so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that we were also going to get the pov of the crew on Earth who are also working to save Watney's life. I think this is what I enjoyed most about the book, that even though Watney is physically on his own on another planet, he's not in the fight alone because he has a whole team and crew working with him to save his life. It was very touching to see the amount of people working to save one person. 

i don’t quite understand the point of the format. it’s mostly told through Watney’s own typed logs, but there’s also voice log transcripts and a third person omniscient narrator detailing rescue attempts back on Earth and foreshadowing disasters on Mars. just a bit convoluted.
tbh some of the heavy science stuff was boring and confusing, which is why i looked forward to Earth scenes so much. i liked the science details in Project Hail Mary better, there it felt less nebulous (lol). however i much prefer Mark Watney over Project Hail Mary’s Ryland Grace: The Martian’s narrator is not just tolerable but actually likable and funny. Andy i appreciate the effort to flesh out the minor characters back on Earth, but having a habit of “squaring papers” is not a personality trait. overall, I think Project Hail Mary had the better story while The Martian was superior on the more delicate aspects of characters and themes.