So, I've had a pretty busy few days, and finally got some time to just indulge in reading today. Yesterday I picked up a copy of The Martian and I finished it just a little bit ago. This is going to be super spoiler heavy and the book is being adapted into a movie starring Matt Damon so be warned.

This book describes the 687 day trials and tribulations of Mark Watney, botanist, engineer and astronaut. A few days into a manned mission on the surface of Mars, a sandstorm develops, threatening the condition of the vehicle designed to get the crew back into orbit for retrieval. In the process of evacuating their living unit Mark is hit by a piece of debris, thrown into the sandstorm and presumed KIA, so his crew blasts off, leaving him with the living quarters, two pressurized rover units, a few hundred days of supplies, eight potatos, and his wits. At the beginning of his Cruso-ian exile he is out of communication with Earth and presumed to be dead. Even with this knowledge he anticipates surviving long enough to be rescued, and begins work under that assumption. He recovers a long-dead probe to restore his communications with earth, almost blows himself up several times making water from hydrogen and oxygen stores, and then again converting water into fuel for his escape from the planets surface. Technically speaking, the processes he describes all fall within modern understandings of science, even the argon-ion engine used to move a ship between Earth and Mars. Plot relavant points of chemistry, physics, biology and medicine are explained in very comfortable language, and Mark is written to be funny, somewhat vulgar in his communication, and a fairly reliable narrator, as most of the book is composed of his mission log style journaling.

The characters in general all feel very well fleshed out and relatable, and there's even some million-mile-high club action, though it's only mentioned a few times in passing. My one sticking point, and this is probably just because of my own mind set, was in Watney's eternal optimism. He gets to several heart-breaking lows, farther from aid than any person living or dead, and manages to figure his way through seemingly insurmountable odds, almost more through his determination than by any real expectation of success. There's a moment near the very end of the book where he remarks that he's started counting on the idea of being rescued, rather than it just being a possibility, rather than the only outcome other than instant death by explosion or drug overdose.

I'd give it a solid 8.5/10, because I felt a bit of a want for what things were like on Mars prior to the day of the accident, and because Watney doesn't really undergo much, if any change. He ends with much the same mindset as he begins, although with a deep hatred of disco music and love of 70's TV. Definitely would recommend to anyone who as ever wanted to go to space.