I scrolled way down to the bottom of my reading list to find this epub from over 5 years ago. I know the whole thing about the discovery of toxic perchlorate in the Martian soil happened shortly after this book was published. It upended the plausibility of books like this and KSR's Mars Trilogy.

It's weird, but with sci-fi this hard, I found it too difficult to suspend my disbelief when he started trying to grow food with Martian soil. And the conversational 1st person thing was already annoying by the end of the first chapter.

Oh well, next.