This book didn’t click for me at all, but I soldiered on to the end and was disappointed. I don’t want to spoil it, but there were two sections where I did nearly stop reading, and one that I actually found highly offensive. Without going into spoilers, don’t expect a castaway survival story – the story takes a sharp veer and there are aliens.

The characters aren’t distinct and the writing falls rather flat. The real problem for me is that nothing actually progresses – the entire plot plot happens, but the lead character never really finds out what’s going on, far less manages to do anything about it. Throughout the entire thing he reacts rather than acts, which is unfortunately true of all the characters. For a book that’s entitled “Survival of the Human Spirit” – well, that title is badly misleading. Don’t expect the human spirit to survive.

One thing that some readers might find: when I started reading this it initially reminded me of a Nintendo game – Lost in Blue 2 – right down to the names of the lead and his off-screen girlfriend, and the methods he uses to survive. Once the other characters come in, this resemblance ends, but for about half the book it is very, very, strong.

I’d have to give this a two. Two days after reading I found myself hard put to mention anything about it, and had to go back to the book, not just my review notes, to write the review. It didn’t leave any more of an impression the second time around, making it very hard to review.