The Martian

Again with 'A Novel'.

When a Martian storm forces a Mars mission to evacuate their base, one man is seemingly killed in a freak accident. He survives, however, and over the next 550 sols (Martian days) must scrounge, adapt and improvise to stretch mission supplies and resources long past breaking point in order to stay alive. On Earth, NASA struggles to come up with a rescue plan, and in the space between the worlds, the rest of his crew wait to hear the news.

The Martian is part Robinson Crusoe epistolary and part modern narrative, and in all honesty it's the former - botanist Mark Watney's survival log - that is by far the better half. It's not that the rest is bad, more that the log sections, composed in Watney's dryly, humourous voice, are excellent. The sections at NASA are still very good, with a range of accessible, convincing characters and just the right mix of technical detail, drama and humour. The weakest parts are the few occasions when Weir steps back to an omniscient perspective to describe the things that no character can see, because by definition they lack the characters who bring the rest of the novel so vividly to life.

The audiobook reading by R.C. Bray is truly excellent, one of the best single-voice readings I've come across, capturing perfectly the tone of the narrative.