Just when he thought it was safe to be abandoned alone on an inhospitable hunk of rusted desert, millions of kilometres from another human soul—Wham!—another calamitous setback, and Mark Watney is fucked! (His word, not mine.) I’m about halfway through the novel now, and even with some of the smartest people on Earth trying to help, it’s not at all clear Watney’s going to make it. The important thing, though, from my point of view as a reader, is that I still care whether he does or not.
If I have any criticisms so far, it’s that the other characters in the book are pretty thinly drawn. I’d like to get to know some of them a bit better. Even Watney himself, although much more detailed, comes across as quite stoic in his log entries. Maybe he needs to be, of course, in order to survive even his initial ordeal, and it’s not as if he never gets discouraged by his predicament. But I would enjoy a little more depth and variety of emotion. He’ll admit he’s lonely as hell, but I don’t really feel what it feels like to be aching for human contact so acutely. I could use a somewhat more poetic flourish in the descriptive bits as well, and a little more philosophizing about things like loneliness, mortality, perseverance, scientific progress, the value of a human life, and so on.
But hey, that’s me. Some readers won’t miss these things, or will consider it a plus that the story is not weighed down with needless exposition or description. And really, you can’t have everything. Different authors have different strengths, and Weir has plenty of important ones. The novel still has my attention, that’s for sure. The action is engaging, the science is interesting and explained in terms an educated layperson can understand, and as I said, I care about whether or not Watney makes it, and I get the sense that the other characters do as well. I have been moved to actual tears on more than one occasion, and I’ve chuckled more than once too. If a novel makes me feel and makes me think, and keeps me turning the pages as quickly as this one does, I consider it a success.
But hey, that’s me. Some readers won’t miss these things, or will consider it a plus that the story is not weighed down with needless exposition or description. And really, you can’t have everything. Different authors have different strengths, and Weir has plenty of important ones. The novel still has my attention, that’s for sure. The action is engaging, the science is interesting and explained in terms an educated layperson can understand, and as I said, I care about whether or not Watney makes it, and I get the sense that the other characters do as well. I have been moved to actual tears on more than one occasion, and I’ve chuckled more than once too. If a novel makes me feel and makes me think, and keeps me turning the pages as quickly as this one does, I consider it a success.