Just look at that cover! I took one look at it and knew it was worth reading. Okay - that's not entirely true - I knew it would be a gamble, but I certainly had high hopes. I'm a sucker for a great cover. And you know what? This book was awesome! It's a ton of fun. It's paced better than a Dan Brown novel, and you don't feel dirty or stupid for reading it. I don't know what else to say without ending up writing a synopsis of the book. I mean, it's about an astronaut that gets stuck on Mars, not much else to say there. It reads like a movie script - but think Apollo 13, not Armageddon. I don't know if any of the stuff I learned about Mars was true, or if the book even accurately describes the Martian environment or NASA protocol, etc., but it's a blast of a novel.