Did a bit of research and finally made my purchase.
It sounded like a good book, received raved reviews online, even my sister said she enjoyed it so much she couldn't put the book down, plus, there is now a movie adaptation and I'm a sucker for novels with movie adaptation, but not vice versa because those novels I assume ends up being shit.
Before purchasing any book on my kindle, I always make it a habit read the sample copy before making my decision,
1. To check whether or not it is too complex for me vocabulary wise, because there are authors who enjoy using big words which in turn makes it unenjoyable for me.
2. Does the story make sense, will I be able to get into the story, is the writing any good, does it go into explicit detail of how every single thing looked. I'm alright if the author is trying to describe a character, but when they start talking about the interior finishing of a house or of a town, that's when my mind just switches off because I don't care if the floor is a "smokey oak color that glistens into a light brown ash color under the sunlight" or that the houses that line the streets are "grey and uneven with peeling wall paint and a torn roof", I don't care, just get on with the main story and stop helping me paint a mental image of the environment that I will probably forget 5 pages later.
So I read the first chapter of the ebook sample and there weren't any red flags, the writer wasn't using any over complicated words, there's really not much in depth description of what's everything around him looks like, because he's stuck on Mars, there's really nothing much to describe about the surrounding except that it's a barren land.
But as I started getting further and further into the book, I realized I was tuning out a lot, I couldn't really concentrate on what was actually happening in the story, this happens a lot when the story gets overly descriptive about the appearance of something and my brain just stops trying to paint a mental picture because it just becomes so exhausting, but that wasn't what was happening here, so when that happens, I will re-read the page again to see what I missed out, and that was when I realized why I was tuning out so much, it was because the writer was talking about science, and not in a "Bill Nye the Science Guy" kind of way that's actually fun and interesting, I felt like I was reading a fucking chemistry textbook, except this one doesn't have any pictures or color to make the boring bearable.
The book is written in a Journal format, so every chapter consist of a few days worth of dairy entry, in which the main character will talk about what problems he faced that day, and come up with ways to tackle the issue, with science. Stuff like taking the Hydrazine from somewhere and mixing with it the Oxygen he gets from separating the Carbon from the Carbon Dioxide he exhales by using the oxygenator, all so he could create water for his plants, because he needed to plant a set number of plants to get enough proteins to last for 4 years on the planet before the next group of astronauts arrive, and the writer made sure to calculate every single fucking number, because as if science isn't boring in school, let's throw in some math as well, and this goes on and on and on and on and my gawd after a while I just had to close my kindle to rest my brain from all the numbers and chemical element calculation, and then get back into the story again, only to be slapped with more science and math and it didn't really pick up much from there.
After barely making it into chapter 4 and realize this was going to be all about the science and maths, I went on to Amazon and requested for a refund because I just couldn't take it anymore, what a fucking waste of time, and I read reviews of people online saying it's the "best book they've ever read because it's so scientifically accurate", WHAT? Since when was reading a Chemistry Textbook fun?
Before I deleted the book from my kindle, I actually went online to read up to see if the story actually picks up and gets more interesting, it apparently doesn't, so no point wasting time trying to complete reading the entire book when I couldn't even get through the first 3 to 4 chapters without tuning out and getting frustrated about not knowing what's actually happening afterwards, not that it really matters because I just get bombarded with more science and math afterwards.
I will probably use that refund to get another Stephen King novel. Also left a review on the Amazon website to show my disdain for the book and I got a thumbs down from a random stranger for it, I really didn't say anything too harsh about the book, just truths about why I think the book sucks, valid opinions from one dissatisfied reader to the Amazon Kindle Community.
So right back at you anonymous thumbs downer, because this is the internet, a place where opinions that don't agree with mine are stupid and redundant.
