Piranesi's Book Journey

I keep hearing good things about this book, but i’m wondering how you all felt about the narration style. I read The Martian a while back and it felt like getting the story from a real bro over a couple of brewskies at the pub (which, nothing is wrong with that, it’s just not my preferred style). Curious to hear your thoughts! Ty

Am I reading the wrong book?🙃 So many people have rated this book 5 stars and I really don't understand why so far. It's okay, but it's kind of boring and the mc, and really all the other characters, are painfully uninteresting. The premise is cool, but that's about it. Some parts are cute and fine to read, but my gosh...what am I missing🫠

The writing is very difficult to get through. Partly because it just sounds like the author is regurgitating the freshman year astrophysics class he just took, but also because of jarring mistakes, like this tense jump:

"Venus's atmosphere is ninety times Earth's pressure and almost entirely carbon dioxide. Its spectroscopy signature of CO2 would be overwhelmingly strong. Mercury had no carbon dioxide at all, so the nearest competitor would be Earth. But we had a minuscule CO2 signature compared to Venus."