The Martian, by Andy Weir

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Andy Weir

If you ask me for the genres I don’t like, I would first mention horror, followed by science-fiction. But guys, that was before I read The Martian!

Mark Watney is left alone in Mars during a sandstorm, when the crew had to evacuate and thought Watney was dead. But he is not. The astronaut has no way to contact Earth to tell them he is alive, and the next mission to land on Mars is scheduled in 4 years, so this man has a problem. The fact that the food he has would feed him only for less than a year before starving to death doesn’t help either. But Watney is a resourceful guy and soon he comes up with a plan: plant potatoes on Mars!

The adventures of Watney on Mars will keep you glued to the book. The story is told through daily entries he keeps in case he finds a solution to send them, but soon we start knowing what’s going on on Earth and also with Watney’s crew on their way home. This astronaut is a genius for the way we works on staying alive and getting a way to communicate with NASA, and he is also very joyful despite the situation he is in, so the book is going to lift your spirits. It talks a lot about science, though, but I think it is explained very well even for non-science people so that anyone can follow Watney’s operations.

Watney’s wisdom

I listened to the audiobook, being this the first fiction novel I haven’t read in Spanish before that I have listened to, and I think the narrator totally becomes Mark Watney. It’s like he is real and tells you what he is doing. I was so engrossed in the novel that, near the end, I had to stop, take a few minutes to think about the possible outcomes of the story (because the reader doesn’t have the slightest idea about what is going to happen), sob a little in advance in case he didn’t get it, and then continue with the book.

I really recommend it.

I think that the film will be on theatres in October, and it looks really good, doesn’t it? Be careful if you still haven’t read it and you plan to, because the trailer reveals most of the story:

The returned, by Jason Mott

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Jason Mott

People who died time ago begin to come back from wherever they had been and appear all over the world. The main character, Jacob, is a child who drawned in a river at the age of eight, and he is taken from China to Arcadia, his hometown, to reunite with his parents, a couple who is now in their eighties, while Jacob is still eight. Would you feel fear for this happening or would you take it as a bless?

With such a imaginative plot and these transcendental questions it brings up, Jason Mott has created a story that, to me, was slow and quite boring, and whose development can be also found in Blindness, the novel by Saramago; but better written and more engaging in the case of the Portuguese Nobel Prize.

Mott doesn’t explain why the returned are here with us; he just tell us how he thinks humans would act in case this extraordinary event happens – by locking them together, separated from the normal people, and by creating groups of haters of the returned, just because they are not like us (this also reminded me to Sookie Stackhouse series, in which the “True living people” hate the vampires and other creatures, which is exactly what happens in The returned).

Regarding the purely narrative aspect, I think that the most interesting characters lack depth, and the pace of the story is irregular – slow most of the time, and quite rush at the end.

My copy of the book. Thanks, Allison!

I really wanted to like this book; I was looking forward to reading it since I read the first reviews about it on my favourite blogs, but I suppose that all those expectations I had, mixed with the similarities to Saramago’s story, made me feel that I haven’t read that great book it should have been.

Summarizing, it has a great premise but a very poor development, but I want to take this opportunity to recommend Blindness to all of you who wanted more from The returned: you will find a powerful story about people who suddenly are different from the others and how fear, hope and brutality make humans be humans.

Other reviews of this book (far more positive than mine):

• Love at first book
• The book wheel
• Ciska’s book chest
• Leeswammes’ blog

The Returned

Jason Mott

Harlequin MIRA

338 pages

Under the dome, by Stephen King

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Stephen King

I never thought I was going to read an author of horror books, but one of my blogger friends, who is a great fan of Stephen King, wrote down a list for me with novels that I might like and not be scared of, including Under the dome. Besides, at that time everybody was reading and reviewing this book, so I was beginning to feel interested.

The premise of the book is a transparent dome whose nature is unknown which encloses Chester’s Mill and which nobody can destroy, but even though this dome itself is quite intriguing, the bulk of the story deals with what takes place inside the dome. There are a lot of characters and subplots, but the main point is that the second councilor of Chester’s Mill, Big Jim, a corrupt politician who is making a fortune by preparing and selling amphetamines, sees the dome as a unique opportunity to turn the town into his particular kingdom. But the president of the United States has decided to put Dale Barbara, a former soldier that happened to be working as a chef in a bar by the time the dome appeared, in charge of the village. Big Jim is not going to allow that, and nobody from outside the dome can stop him.

Of course, this is not an accurate summary since every character in Chester’s Mill has a vital role in the development of the novel, so we have a group of young policemen trained in a few hours by Big Jim, a journalist that is going to uncover the truth about him, a third councilor addicted to painkillers, a doctor that discovers that the gas reservoirs of the hospital have been stolen, and so on.

You get hooked on the book from the first page because all the characters are so good – or so bad – that every page is exciting: you are astonished at all the things they are doing and you look for revenge in the next pages. The evil characters are so disgusting that you mentally curse them every time they appear, which makes the read very enjoyable. There are also some bloody passages that I suppose are King’s signature, but fortunately I didn’t have nightmares with them (that’s the main reason why I don’t see terror films, nor do I read terror books) even though everything is so visual in his narrative style.

The only thing I didn’t like is the dome itself: when we finally get to know what it is, the whole thing itself is so unbelievable that you feel disappointed, but anyway, I think the author mainly wanted to address the terrestrial behavior of (disturbed) human beings rather than showing us how his excessive imagination can spoil a novel.

As long as it might look (1,000 pages), Under the dome is a book that you read really fast thanks to the thrill of every page and the appeal of every character. It is not perfect, but I won’t take that terrible ending into account and I will probably try with another book by Stephen King.

Book on Amazon ♦ Book on goodreads

To be read pile: 3/12

Tears in rain, by Rosa Montero

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Rosa Montero

When I won this book in a giveaway time ago, I decided to follow Rosa Montero on Facebook and I have discovered firstly that she manages her own social networks (this doesn’t happen with all the authors) and secondly, that she is strongly committed to the social situation we are experiencing in my country, so she is always sharing and promoting charity campaigns to get money for the people that are being evicted from their houses, or get a new home for the abandoned animals in animal shelters. For all these things I was almost sure I was going to like her books, and yes, I was right: Tears in rain is first Rosa Montero novel I have read and it won’t be the last.

The plot is set in the future, in the year 2109, and everything is very similar to the world portrayed in Blade Runner. The main character is Bruna Husky, a combat replicant who works as a detective in Madrid. Replicants are made for specific jobs and they have to work for their first 2 years for the government; after that they can live their own lives. They have artificial memories that make them feel they have been children and now adults, that they have had a family but they only live 10 years (from 25 to 35) until they die. Bruna is obsessed with her age; all her life is a countdown.

The story starts when Bruna’s replicant neighbor appears at her door saying she is human and the replicants want to kill her and then, after trying to kill Bruna, she commits suicide. Bruna is shocked when she discovers there are more cases like her neighbour’s: some replicants are becoming insane and they kill other people and themselves. But this is not bad news for everyone: the political party for human supremacy is taking advantage of these situations for people to think replicants are cruel and hate humans, so the best thing to do is kill them.

Bruna’s world is very similar to ours, especially in the bad things such as racism and poverty, and the differences are being explained little by little throughout the book. It’s not difficult to imagine all that surrounding technology if you have watched Blade Runner, and Rosa Montero even goes beyond and talks about teleportation, extraterrestrial beings and so on. There have been wars and climate changes but people are still people and act like people nowadays. But the main subject of the story is life: what makes us humans; our memories, even if they are artificial? Are you able to fall in love or have good friends if you know you will die in a very few years? These are the questions Bruna Husky has to face every day of her short life.

I promise you will see Bruna as human as you and me.