Review: The Martian Incident by Ryan M. Patrick

Blurb:

John Cameron is a NASA engineer, working as a spacecraft accident investigator as humanity expands throughout the solar system in the late twenty-first century. When a mysterious UAV crashes in the American sector on Mars, he joins an interagency team to investigate the downed aircraft. But what starts as a simple mission turns into anything but when they make an astonishing discovery deep beneath the sands of the red planet...

A standalone science fiction thriller that's perfect for fans of Michael Crichton, Andy Weir, or James Rollins!

Review:

Cameron is a smart NASA engineer from Columbia. He is stranded far from home. Separated from his team, and lost in an unknown labyrinth of caves on the red planet, he has only a few hours of oxygen left. Outside, a howling sandstorm rages on, hampering any rescue operation, and something is jamming communications on all frequencies.

To make matters worse, none of his friends or family are even aware that he is on Mars. Will he be able to get back to them? Could this daring mission end up being his last?

The only guidance he has are unfamiliar, time-worn footprints leading deeper into the caves. He has no idea whom the footprints belonged to - were they even human? Did they ever make it out? Or will they lead him to something dangerous?

To find out, dive into Ryan’s intriguing debut novel - The Martian incident. 

Suspenseful and liberally laced with scientific and military details, this book will appeal to a technically inclined audience enthusiastic about military action. Thanks to his background as a space force veteran, Ryan’s presentation is hyperrealistic and authentic. The world he describes is an imagined near-future, where humanity has colonized Mars. The administrative structure is the same as our present day world, and the technologies presented are well-thought-out extrapolations of current generation state-of-the-art.

Tensions between competing nations with deep military prowess rise when an unidentified craft is detected close to a mineral-rich region in Mars. Through some innocuous diplomatic conniving, our protagonist, who would typically be confined to a nine-to-five desk job at Goddart, gets looped into a military expedition to explore the anomalous vessel of unknown origin. 

Will his analytical skills and technical aptitude be even remotely useful in this strange mission? Cameron wonders, as he jumps into the opportunity that takes him far out of his comfort zone. The answer, as it turns out, is an indisputable yes. Though initially, he was just expected to tag along, through a twist of fate he gets to play a critical role and now the survival of his team depends on him doing something nobody expected him to do.

‘As a young twenty-something he had little thought of his own mortality, and like many of his peers considered himself to be basically invincible. However, this whole experience had managed to reshape his views on the matter over the course of just a few days.’

While near-future sci-fi is a bit out of my own comfort zone, I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation and the flow of the story. The book does end up with some open tangents, and I hope Ryan builds up on this in future books.

If you are looking for out-of-the-world imaginative world-building or inexplicably advanced tech bordering on magic, this may not be the right book for you. But I, personally, enjoyed the flaws and limitations in the technology shaping the course of the story. It was also interesting to see the story evolve from the perspective of other factions, like the Chinese observation center. In particular, as an integration engineer, it has always irked me when in shows like Star Trek any random alien artifact can be easily plugged in irrespective of the make and model of the current spacecraft. It felt good to see the protagonist struggle to find the right adapters for a change.

All in all, this was a fun, enjoyable read. Though some parts of the plot did lean a bit heavily on luck, I loved Cameron and his ability to grow out of his area of expertise and adapt to increasingly challenging situations.