The Martian

You know how it's like when there's a minor problem with your computer, and you find an online tutorial that should solve it, and you start messing around with stuff you shouldn't be messing around with, and pretty soon you somehow manage to delete your operating system, so you try to fix this but you do so badly that after a while the computer doesn't even boot up, and you find yourself sitting on the floor at 2 am, coffee stains on your shirt, prying open your laptop with a screwdriver, cursing your life and the world and your maddening stupidity, because really, it was just a minor problem, dammit.

So, the Martian.

I've settled on 3 stars, because honestly I can't say that I really liked this book. It was absolutely exciting and I devoured it whole, but it's also got some glaring faults such as the cardboard cut out characters, or the fact that Watney is a douche and the world's better off with him on Mars (in space, nobody can hear your bad puns.)

Really, I can overlook all that, but the book's biggest crime is that it's got no sense of wonder. Mars is just technicalities and mathematics. We never get to experience that exhilarating moment of ‘omg space!'. How does the surface of Mars even look like? Better google this, because the book isn't about to tell you. You will learn a lot about gasses though, so there's that.

All in all, it was a fun read and I did tear up in the end. A little. A tiny bit. So 3 stars it is.

P.S. why the hell didn't Watney bring his own USB to Mars? This really bugged me.