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I usually try reading a book before looking at its reviews on any website and I was honestly surprised to see the ratings of this book being at around 3½ stars here on Goodreads. I am a fan of Lovecraftian-style horror and I thought this book really shows the influence its had on Lovecraft's stories.

Firstly, I don't think that the characters are what makes this book so great. They have their moments but most of the time they seem rather dull to me. No, what fascinated me most about this book was the author's description of the horrors the main protagonist seems to encounter, most of which describe exactly what I love to read when reading a horror story. I find his descriptions very detailed and engaging — yet near the end of the book they start to pad out slightly and the author starts repeating himself quite a bit which I found to be a shame. I believe this book could've been made quite a bit shorter but it would then also lose the charm it had to me.

As a fan of Lovecraft's work I would totally recommend this book!

I had heard quite a lot about the movie and honestly, it didn't seem interesting to me. However, as soon as I had heard that it was based on a book, I started to look into it and thought that I would give it a shot.

I must say that when I usually read a book, I don't read more than 50–100 pages at a given time. This book however managed to get my attention which meant I was able to finish it within just a day. The main reason for this is, in my opinion, the main protagonist's personality which I thought really spoke to me. His style of writing is often-times very amusing which had me laugh a good couple of times whilst reading, yet he also manages to convey a tone of urgency and seriousness within all the humour. I also liked the detailed descriptions of the technology used on Mars and how he managed to fix it if it happened to break — which it turns out is more than just a handful of times!

However, despite all of this, I must say that the book also had its weak spots — mainly the parts that play on Earth. For those who haven't read the book, the book plays part on both Mars — focussing on the main protagonist — and on Earth — focussing on them trying to communicate with the main protagonist and rescuing him. While reading the parts that play on Earth I would frequently find myself getting rather bored and hoping that we would soon be talking about what is happening back on Mars again. My main problem with the Earth parts is the fact that I found all the characters, except for the main protagonist, rather dull and boring. This is probably the reason I didn't manage to finish this book in one session, as the parts that play on Earth increase in length and number near the middle of the book.

All in all however, I would say that this has been the best SciFi book I've read so far and I would definitely recommend fans of SciFi to read it!

I bought this book on sale when I was in the UK back in 2016 because it had been recommended by me. I am rather interested in language and especially the history of language and the origin of its words, so I thought this would be a book I'd love to read.

The main reason for why it has taken me this long to actually start reading this book for more than a few minutes is because I found it actually quite boring. On my flight to the airport and on the train from the airport to my town I tried getting into the book but for some reason it didn't speak to me. I was sure that I was missing something and swore that I would start reading it as soon as I'd get home — but I didn't. Therefore, more than a year later, I started reading it again and finishing it felt kind of like a chore to me.

First of all, I really like the subject of this book and the author tries writing it in a rather amusing way which led to me chuckling every so often. However, it seems to me that the author tries too hard to make the jokes sound funny most of the time and it also seems as if this is the only way for him to get readers engaged. To me however, the style of writing was not engaging at all and quite boring which meant I wasn't able to read more than just a couple of pages most of the time. Another problem which I've had with this book was that I personally didn't think the words he used to be very interesting. Their story was sometimes a bit meh and.