I'm going to be honest: I didn't go into this book expecting too much. I truly expected that it would be almost completely devoid of substance, whether that substance be negated by overuse of humor or overemphasis on an exciting plot. I could not have been more wrong. 
 Certainly there was humor, and there was an exciting plot, but both of these served the greater purpose of exemplifying the resilience and overall altruism of humanity. The following quote isn't necessarily a "spoiler" per se (it is essentially a sumation of the theme found on the final page), but I'll hide it just in case. 
 (view spoiler)[...every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it's true. (hide spoiler)]I'll admit, it did give me pause to find that the broad theme was explicitly stated on the final page (definitely seems like a red flag), but, to my surprise, it actually works! It works for the same reason it works throughout the entire book: The sections written as logs by Mark Watney follow something of a stream of consciousness structure, and thus directly shows his own realistic realizations! 
 I would explain that specific issue further, but it would definitely spoil the ending (view spoiler)[as if we didn't already know how it was going to end (hide spoiler)]. So, instead let's examine Watney's humor. For about the first third of the book, I loved it. It was dry--it was ridiculous--it was pleasing to me. After that it began getting a little old. I've realized that there's more to it than simply how much I laughed, however. It's more about how much Watney laughed. It is just another illustration of the human spirit. 
 This assertion may seem difficult to believe, even ridiculous, if not for the fact that Watney exhibited other emotions as well. In fact, he proved to be a rather multi-dimensional character with the humor as simply a mechanism to suppress these feelings and make the best of a terrible situation. Furthermore, all [most, rather] of the logs written by Watney would have been written a short amount of time after the fact--after he'd had time to collect himself. 
 The setting also gives opportunity to so many possibilities--extreme isolation/loneliness, hopelessness, self-reflection, etc. Weir effectively touched upon all of these without making melodramatic garbage! Furthermore, there is the broad range of emotions of those on Earth and the other members of the crew. 
 And in addition, it is an interesting plot! It is somehow eventful despite the amount of downtime and "technical description." The problems and solutions are intriguing, "out there," and yet somehow realistic and believable. I cannot believe I'm saying this, but holy buckets there was so much suspense (despite the fact that everyone knows how the book ends). It was just wonderful. 
 Naturally, there were some instances where it didn't work. A lot of the plot twists/solutions were rather sudden and coincidental. A lot of the humor in the latter half of the group was rather "eh." A lot of the information (not to mention the themes) seemed rather spoon-fed to the reader (if I had a nickle for every time I read a phrase resembling "Hey, remember this detail that I touched upon a couple of pages back? Did you catch that because that's about to become important now!"). Having finished the book, though, I found all of this somehow very forgivable. 
 All things considered, I'm hovering around a four and a half stars. I really want to say five stars, but I just can't quite bring myself to do it. 
 Nonetheless, I absolutely recommend this to just about anybody. It was enjoyable, and it essentially lifted me from a month-long reading slump. What more can I really say? I just really liked it for some reason.