Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir – A Book Review

Blurb:

A lone astronaut.
An impossible mission.
An ally he never imagined.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission – and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery-and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?

Author: Andy Weir

Publisher: Cornerstone Digital

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 482

Release Date: 04/05/2021

My Chosen Format: Kindle

My Rating of ‘Project Hail Mary’: 5 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon, Audible

Review:

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this.

Much like the Martian, the plot revolves around one poor astronaut who finds himself in an impossible to survive situation. It features Weir’s trademark of sciencing his way out of any and all problems, especially those his experiments land him into.

From the opening page I was hooked and, from that point on, until the final page was turned, I didn’t want it to end. Even now, a good amount of time after finishing, I still didn’t want it to end. It really was that enjoyable and probably holds my vote for featuring one of the coolest characters ever created.

There’s much I could say about this, but a good deal of it would reveal a pretty big spoiler or two, so I shall refrain from that. What I will say is, if you haven’t read The Martian (you should really go and read The Martian. It’s the thing your life is missing) and are concerned this might be a bit science-heavy for you, you would be both right and wrong. 

Right, because it is very science-heavy. Wrong because Weir writes in a way that is easy to follow along and enjoy. And, might I add, that for a story about a guy stuck in the depths of space, it’s fast-paced and unputdownable. 

The character of Ryland Grace is very similar to that of Mark Watney from The Martian. Not because he’s a botanist (he isn’t) more because of the way he speaks/thinks/acts etc … but I think that’s just Weir’s writing style. It’s no bad thing and I feel Weir’s use of first person narrative is some of the best I have seen of any author. I would, however, love to see a character with a different kind of personality in future works.

To break up what could have been a slow book considering he’s just in a ship, struggling to remember his way out of amnesia, Weir breaks the book up into chapters from before the mission started and some in the present moment when Grace is aboard his doomed little ship. It’s a good way of having him recall bits at a the speed that he needs to recall them and a wonderful way to shake up the pacing of the novel.

The dynamic between certain characters is phenomenal and kept me turning the pages long after my eyes were telling me the only thing I should have turned was the light switch. If, like me, you were hungry for an outstanding Sci-Fi novel and, also like me, truly struggling to find one that was better than ‘just being fairly good’, then look no further as Project Hail Mary is that book.