I enjoyed Weir’s first book about a science dude on Mars, but decided to give his second one a miss after hearing lackluster reviews about his attempt at a female protagonist. For his third book, he’s gone back to his tried-and-true approach of having a science dude talk about a lot of science shit and although my eyes glaze over as all the science shit happens, it was a fun and heartwarming read. Heartwarming isn’t the first word that comes to mind when the plot centres around him waking up alone on a spaceship but it really does turn out that way, somehow. I don’t want to spoil it any more than that, so give it a read if you like sci-fi (I would love if they could turn this one into a movie too).
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Edited 2026/04/03:
I watched the movie, so I decided to give this one a re-read! I think the movie did such a good job of adapting this to the screen (and to be honest, removing a fair amount of the scientific explanations which weren’t that necessary to the core of the story). And considering you need an actor to basically act to himself alone in space and carry the whole movie, Ryan Gosling did a perfect job.
On a second read, and comparing it to other books I’ve read recently, I will say that the writing style itself maybe isn’t the most beautiful, but it gets the point across, and nonetheless the core plot points still make it a really fun read.