The Martian(book review)

Hello again. I recently read this new book, The Martian by Andy Weir and it is just too cool. It is currently my second favourite book. It explains a man’s (Mark Watney) survival on a world where there is nothing except craters soil and frozen water. So I think you might guess that I am talking about Mars. Anyway, this book is from Mark’s point of view.  Mostly in past tense, because he enters logs or electronic journal entries about his everyday life and survival on a barren world.

So I’ll begin with a short summary.

The story begins with a crew of six (Lewis, Mark Watney, Johansen, Rick Martinez, Beck and Vogel) on Mars next to their temporary habitat.A word about the crew before I start. Commander Lewis is the captain. Mark Watney was the backup commander and botanist. Rick Martinez is the pilot. Johansen and Beck are the engineers and the people who go into space to repair broken parts. And finally Vogel is the chemist and biologist. They were repairing their radio antenna when a huge sandstorm forced the mission to abort. But during the abort sequence Mark Watney was (as everyone thought) killed by a loose sharp end of a radio dish, sending him flying a few meters away from the lander. The crew was devastated, but had no choice but to return to Earth. Soon, NASA learned that he was alive, and this is where I have to stop, because I will spoil it for you if I go on. Read the book and find out what happens to Mark. By the way, my two favourite people in the book are Mark Watney and Venkat Kapoor.

This is seriously one of the few books I liked completely. And I do have a favourite part. It is the part where he journeys to a shuttle 3235 kilometres away from his habitat. I liked the whole journey. But as I said, telling you details will spoil it.

Now I am going to do a comparison of the the book to real life. In the story, Hermes was a giant space station which was used in the book’s Mars missions. It was propelled by ion engines. Ion engines do exist in real life. They run on fuel tanks full of Xenon which is a noble gas. (That’s really the only thing I know about Xenon.) The ion engine very slowly accelerates the vessel and slowly it gains speed. But it is too big to land. So it (now I am back to talking about Hermes) goes into a low Mars orbit and the crew boards the Ares MDV (Mars Decent Vehicle) which is used to lower and land on the the surface. Then the crew does their research, collect some rocks and analyse it in their habitat or ‘hab’. When they are done they board the MAV which is sent to Mars before Hermes leaves Earth orbit. They return to Hermes and then back to Earth. The missions are always named after their MAV and MDV. So they are called Ares missions. Ares 3 was Mark Watney’s mission.

Ok now I come to the end of my book review. Oh, and I almost forgot! I’ll rate this book 4.75 stars out of 5. Anyway thanks for reading my first book review. And if you were paying attention, my first favourite book is the graphic novel BONE. Catch you next time!