It's 58 pages long and the description says it takes about an hour to read. I normally take rather longer to read a book than the time stated as I'm not an especially fast reader, but I did it in around 40 minutes, hence there really wasn't much content in this.
This "book" is actually just a blog entry by someone like you and me who's read the book and has an opinion on it, nothing more. On top of this, the author doesn't have a scientific mind, so didn't appreciate all the hard science that went into The Martian. This made it the most plausible science fiction story I've read in years and hence didn't insult my intelligence. Unfortunately, the author actually admitted that the science went over her head as she is isn't scientifically minded. That's fine as such, but in that case she's not qualified to make a full assessment of this book and it should have been given to someone else, scientifically minded, to review. This issue irked me significantly.
On top of this, it's completely independently written, without any contact with The Martian's author, Andy Weir, hence offers no new insights into the story, it being completely derivative. The claim "Dive a little deeper into his world, discover hidden treasures" is certainly not lived up to and could arguably be called out as deceptive advertising, since there were no hidden treasures to discover, only opinion and some analysis by the author. In fact it was this line that helped convince me to buy it, so I'm none too happy about having been duped by it.
Therefore, charging £2.99 (Kindle) for it is way overpriced, especially considering that the waaay longer novel that it's based on can be purchased for just £3.85 (Kindle). Had it been given away for free then this makes for a reasonable blog entry from a random person's take on a novel. If it had to be put behind a paywall, then 50p would have been a reasonable price, with around 80p tops. As it was, I had a £1 Amazon promotional rebate applied to it, so don't feel quite so hard done by, but it's still annoying to have wasted my money on it, on principle.
I could have given this one star, but upgraded it to two since it was reasonably well written and without any obvious typos. No way is it worth a three though.
The Martian: A Sidekick to the Andy Weir Novel
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Customer reviews
Top reviews from other countries
Mikey
Overpriced, very short and reads like a blog entry. Not worth the price
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 September 2015Verified Purchase
Andreas H.
nutzlos
Reviewed in Germany on 3 September 2015Verified Purchase
Constantinople K75
If you are expecting help with the tech - not so good. In regard to this oversight the author has ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 August 2015Verified Purchase
Phil
Perhaps 99p would be better? I should have read the reviews before buying ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 September 2015Verified Purchase
MzMonka
Expands well on The Martian
Reviewed in the United States on 31 July 2015Verified Purchase
