Project Hail Mary

Given how much I enjoyed Andy Weir's latest, I feel a little dumb for waiting this long to finally read Project Hail Mary. The novel kept returning to the New York Times bestseller list months following its release and that piqued my curiosity. Now that I've read it, it's easy to understand why. Though it is indeed a science fiction book, it's a decidedly accessible work that can appeal to a much broader audience than just SFF readers.

Once again, Weir's protagonist must science the shit out his predicament and the results make for another entertaining ride!

Here's the blurb:

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and 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, he 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?

An irresistible interstellar adventure as only Andy Weir could imagine it, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.

The narrative structure of the novel uses flashback sequences to complement Ryland Grace's real time storyline. Suffering from total amnesia at the beginning, these scenes flesh out his character as he gradually regain his memories and understand why he's so far from Earth and what he and his crewmates were meant to try to accomplish. These past and present timelines worked extremely well and made for compulsive reading. Project Hail Mary is one of those books that you just can't put down.

It doesn't take long for Grace to realize that he's on a suicide mission to save our planet from a star-devouring microorganism that's eating the sun. As a matter of course, Grace must needs science the shit out of this. And this is where Andy Weir proves yet again just how big a nerd he truly is. There is a lot of scientific stuff to dumb down for us readers, that goes without saying. But Grace is a junior high science teacher and he does so with an enthusiasm that is contagious. That's the beauty of Project Hail Mary, the fact that you can follow everything that's going on without a university degree in various fields of study. Some people have complained that some things appear to fall into his lap a little too easily, and that's the honest truth. The linguistic stuff, especially. And yet, this doesn't take anything away from the overall reading experience.

Ryland Grace makes for an interesting main protagonist and given his plight it's impossible not to root for him. With the odds stacked against him and the fate of his world and everyone he loves hanging in the balance, it's hard not to admire his intelligence and ingenuity. Grace attacks each new problem with tenacity and self-deprecating humor, which makes for wonderful read. It's interesting to see Grace's past and present perspectives, as well as how remembering how he ended up light years away affects him as the countdown to extinction keeps ticking. The reason for his amnesia was a shocking revelation. Stratt is the only character that truly stands out of the supporting cast of the past timeline, yet it's Grace's relationship with Rocky that makes this such a memorable read.

Rhythm is never an issue at any point in the book. Although no page-turner, the slower paced portions of Project Hail Mary are never dull and they're almost always complemented by related flashback scenes focusing on the creation of the spaceship which is mankind's only hope for survival.

Fun, clever, and thought-provoking, that's Andy Weir's latest novel in a nutshell!

Highly recommended!

The final verdict: 8.5/10

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