Leszek Ciesielski

The book is definitely interesting. It is not, though, SF, as that is literary genre, and The Martian is more of a NASA guidebook or manual. The protagonist muddles through catastrophe after catastrophe, only to be thrown into the next one with extreme predictability, all the time keeping the certainty that his/NASA's engineering genius will save him. No characters to speak of, the whole read is a demonstration of authors proficiency with the “science” part, but very little of the “fiction”. More like an astronaut training drill.

For a beginner to savings in personal finance, this book tends to be recommended as the first steps. However, I found the forced fake-old-English style off-putting (and not used consistently either). I'm also saddened that the author didn't look for actual factual knowledge of finance in Babylon ( such as in [b:Debt: The First 5,000 Years 6617037 Debt The First 5,000 Years David Graeber https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1390408633s/6617037.jpg 6811142] ), instead only learning it was where finance and banking begun- and he invented all the rest to fit his American-centric narrative.If you're looking for a starter on personal finance, [b:The Simple Path to Wealth: Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life 30646587 The Simple Path to Wealth Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life J.L. Collins https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1466299641s/30646587.jpg 51187846] is a much better choice.

I've enjoyed it. Dragon riders, reasonably thought out battles. And a not-quite-regency era romance. Yeah, it's cheesy and happy. It also (at least the first book) doesn't explore much behind the ridiculously class-obsessed setting, which for a recent book is a let down. It's also ridiculously francophobic and painting a horror-like image of Napoleon, which (as a Polish person) makes it somewhat hard to cheer for the protagonists.