Kevin

This book started out well but eventually started just annoying me. The overall formula is very similar to The Martian. What annoyed me most is that Weir, like hollywood is currently doing with every movie, decided to shove his political views in my face and continued to rant about it throughout. Why can't people keep their political/sociopolitical beliefs out of their novels. I understand it's their right to write it how they want but many are sick of it. If I had read the bad reviews on Amazon before buying this book, I would not have purchased or read it. Story is 3 stars maybe but the other crap gets a star deducted...was tempted to give it a 1 star review. I have far too many book on my TBR to read some average story filled with someone's personal political views injected throughout. Worst book I've read this year. Must do more research before buying/reading. Bleh!

Update/Additional review data:

This could of been a better story and a 4 star rating from me but I just hate these authors that want to preach their political views to me in their stories...That's not what I want to read. Seems some books these days are going the way of hollywood. Apparently, Weir is a big Thunberg admirer...He cant stop preaching his concerns for the climate, amongst other things. Too bad, another author throwing their views in our face to detract from the overall story. Other than that, its a decent story that is similar in format to The Martian....I guess that's the only novel formula he knows how to write. I'll probably skip the movie. It will most likely be a partial-documentary on human caused climate change. If this stuff doesn't bother you, then you may get some enjoyment out of the story.

Update: So, this is a good, entertaining story. Besides the political/sociopolitical views of the author being sprinkled throughout the story, it was an entertaining story. I didn't mind the ending as some other have. If you don't mind the author throwing in his political/sociopolitical views and you can get your brain to overlook some things that would most likely be improbably if not impossible. Won't give more detail cause I don't want to spoil anything for anyone going into this book blind.

Ratings:
Story/plot - 3.5 out of 5
Characters - 3
Pacing - 3
Science/believe-ability - 2
Prose - 3 - Pretty simple straight forward prose
OVERALL SCORE - 3 minus 1 for the personal political views thrown in (that don't add to the story) - 2

There you have it. That's my rating. I did enjoy it but I could have enjoyed it more if not for the shortcomings I mentioned.

Gave this a 7.5 on my 10 point scale...probably a 3.5 stars here.
Good read but had some issues. Did not like how the alien race magically knew so much about Earth and humans. Didnt carer for the human computer part and the fact that it seemed they didnt know about computers but then created human version of all the main components. But a good interesting read overall.