In a word: sublime! I use that word in its romantic sense of awesome, even overwhelming, lush and powerful, moving in ways similar to the tragic.

I appreciate Weir's play with genres. Just as the end of the novel (unlike the movie) emphasizes the heroic ensemble, the shifting genres prevent readers from focusing exclusively on Watney and his harrowing experience; instead, we follow on the level of narrative form the diverse yet all significant choices, encounters, and challenges that the characters endure and overcome.

The wind on his face slices through the feeling of almost and then his bicycle lifts off; it flies above the lake, over the city. It flies until there are his mother and father. They are alive again and he is their jumping-up-and-down boy. When they take him up in their arms, the answer is: You are forgiven. When he puts his face in the warm crook of their necks, they are healed.