Four stars for some parts and just two for others — I really enjoyed Watney's first-person narration; the passages in omniscient third, not so much — so I'm averaging it out to three.

Macgyver meets Survivor meets [some space colonization short story I vaguely remember reading in English class but can no longer recall the name of]. Murphy's Law in full effect. Man vs. (unfamiliar) nature. I'm 100% here for the premise.

While I've forgotten basically everything relevant that I ever learned about astronomy and/or engineering, the science seemed mostly viable in that I had no idea what anyone was talking about for the most part so I kind of skimmed the explanations and focused on the general plot.

As I mentioned before, Watney's a great storyteller — funny, dramatic, relatable — but the third-person POV bridges, while appreciated on a plot level, paled in comparison: awkward phrasings and some technical errors, and a certain lackluster quality that I can't seem to pin down. Points for casual ethnic diversity, but it'd be even better if the general narrative wasn't so rife with microaggressions.

In terms of tone, I personally didn't feel any significant will he make it suspense; this was probably in part because Watney himself was so focused on just solving the next problem to stay alive until he could be rescued, and that relentless single-mindedness came across clearly. That said, I had a harder time empathizing with the audience back on Earth, civilians waiting with bated breath and NASA employees frantically working to bring him home.

To sum up, I greatly enjoyed like 70% of this book but the rest was a little disappointing.