William Read

This takes all the best parts of his debut, and makes them better

Wow...
I loved Happy head, it was this intensely poetic, deep-meaning, thoughtful story about misuse of drugs, and depression, so when I picked up this, I was ready for something just as good.

And I got it. Whereas the Debut was about depression, this is about trauma, and you can just feel the sense that Silver is writing from a place of experience, with his teenage mental health experience. And consequently it all feels so real: The cliffhangers are of a grade I can't remember him being capable of; indeed when you get to the end of the book, there is so little of what you recognise.

It is amazing.

Gives you more than what you put in

On a shallow level, this book can seem a bit uninspiring, on another level it can raise some important philosophical questions about how the Human Species values their time and resources.

It's quite hard to call this something other than a lazy read - it is not that hard. With that in mind, I found that Weir easily manages to write quite a brooding sort of book, but only on a level in which the easy reader can ignore, but the reader who is looking for more of a challenge can feel their needs satisfied.

Weir also manages to make the story not too boring, especially for people who have misplaced their diploma in chemistry - and again that is another example for the book living up to multiple reader's needs - the scientific one, the uninterested one, and so on.

On a side note
When I was reading this, people kept asking me - ah, the movie's so good, which is interesting, because I've never really had that happen to me, even if the respective movie is more famous than ‘The Martian'. In fact, If I had been reading Harry Potter, for example then I don't think people would have made such comments - perhaps it's because a lot of people know the book, but not as many people know there is a Martian book...
I think that if I had been reading Jurassic Park, than it would have been called out...

Hmm

I think this could have been good had it been written by a different author, dealt with a better subject and a more developed cliffhanger. Unfortunately the cliffhanger felt out of place

There are about a million books on creative writing out there, and about a hundred books which present a structure that every book, every story ever told applies to. This is of course bullshit, but it can be interesting as a writer to play around with the ideas it presents. The Beat sheet is exactly that, if you want to write a proven cliche, then use that structure, but it's not something you need to learn, because it's almost slightly obvious if you know the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis structure. More does not need to be added to that. The whole screenplay physics is very interesting too. It applies to books too.

Overall, it was very interesting, but I could not stand the writer. Snyder was overtly sexist and a nepo baby.

Hmmm...I think Weir went a bit overboard There isn't anything wrong about the plot of this, although perhaps a little bit unrealistic, It's a nice idea; Spoiler And it has been a long time since I've read about a friendly UFO, in science fiction, , but Weir is just a bit too scientific for the ordinary reader, I mean I get he wants the reader to understand what is going on, but it slightly feels like a University Theses, and consequently, I ended up all but skim reading it. Oh, and the whole Junior Science Teacher being all but a world renowned scientist is just a little bit too far.