The Martian

This is in some ways a delightful book. It's incredibly detailed in its technical aspects, and the inventiveness of the hero is quite wonderful to watch. There's a continual vein of sardonic humor running through, and a nice sense of suspense at the cascading disasters that occur.

That said, this is a nerd's book. It is driven almost entirely by the mastery of technical details, which are set forth more like engineering term papers (wait, were there even papers in Engineering? I was an English major...) than story narrative. There is a modicum of fairly one-dimensional characterization layered on top of it, and a plot that consists of an almost predictable chain of catastrophes. It fits a small niche of technically-driven science fiction but lacks any of the breadth and depth of much of the genre.

I have a friend who is reading this she feels like she should be taking notes for a test I tend to agree.