This is a copy of my Goodreads review of "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir. 4/5 stars.
My Review
I bought this book in October 2024 after first learning that Phil Lord and Chris Miller were directing an adaptation of the film releasing in 2026. I also considered myself a fan of Andy Weir since I read The Martian back in middle school and really enjoyed it.
I started reading it at the time and got about a quarter of the way through before shelving it. I would say I was busy with school work or something, but in reality I was lazy. In my defense, the start of the book is pretty rough. The stakes aren't really high at the start and honestly Ryland Grace kind of pissed me off. He felt like a Marvel character with how he quips. He's alone in a space ship and he is talking as though he has an audience laughing at everything he says. Eventually as the story progresses and it becomes more dramatic, the quips decrease and I become invested in Ryland and the story as a whole.
Andy Weir is truly a nerd and its fun to read someone so passionate write about science so easily as he does. While I am definitely not smart enough to understand all of the science and math Weir does to justify the protagonist's actions and scenarios, I trust him enough to believe that he's mostly correct. The book's best moments are when Ryland and Rocky have a new problem and just bounce ideas off one another and perform experiments. The best part is that they make understandable mistakes and have to fix them too. They're not just absolute geniuses. Compared to The Martian, the science behind Project Hail Mary is leagues more advanced. The Martian was just regular old space travel except they go to Mars now. Some cool environmental science there though. Project Hail Mary deals with relativity, space ship navigation, microbiology, and more and I can hardly wrap my head around it. I guess that's why Andy Weir is so popular. He makes people want to learn more about the topics he writes about and its very enjoyable. I personally had to pause reading and watch some YouTube videos explaining relativity when those topics came up in the story.
One thing about the structure of the book that I noticed was that it was written almost like the author expected it to be picked up by a film studio. There are very clear film editing tropes and transitions between paragraphs and chapters that I can easily see being done in the film adaptation. A lot of the story is flip flopping between memories and the present and each memory is triggered by something in the present which I'm pretty sure I've seen replicated in a movie before. There is even a paragraph where Ryland tries to trigger a memory consciously and the paragraph breaks like a memory is about to be narrated, but then it just goes back to the present with Ryland being frustrated which is pretty funny. Honestly, I really like when stories show exposition through flashbacks and this book does it very well with some nice twists and callbacks hidden in these flashbacks. You really become invested with Ryland as he learns why he is doing what he is doing and the reasons he was put on the ship in the first place.
The only thing I really dislike about the book is that the dialog is very cringe and does not fit the impending doom of the scenario, especially at the start. It's not just Ryland, even in the flashbacks people have such a light hearted tone and there are so many quips and awkward lines. The Martian was pretty similar and I guess Andy Weir just wants his stories to be light hearted, but it worked better in The Martian since the stakes weren't too high. Only Mark Watney was in danger there vs the entire Earth in this book. Perhaps I'm asking a bit much of the book in terms of the characters. The last sci fi book I read was God Emperor of Dune and the entire Dune book series has some of the best characters and stories ever so it's unfair to compare Project Hail Mary with Dune.
I also thought the ending was a little abrupt and the climax wasn't anything insane. I liked how it ended overall with Ryland's character ending up on Erid and going back to teaching. It's kind of wholesome. The thing is the action climax of the book occurred way before when Ryland almost killed Rocky and the last interesting science scene occurred when Ryland figured out that Astrophage could get through the Xenonite. The problem of saving Rocky lasted only one chapter and Ryland saved him in like one page. It makes sense, but then the book time skips to Ryland living on Erid after saving it and Earth and the book ends. Feels way too abrupt. Also I don't get why Ryland wouldn't go back to Earth as soon as he could. Like what if none of the beetles made the trip. I feel like that's a likely enough outcome to make Ryland have to go home. Not sure what he's waiting for at the end of the book.
Also, I'm not smart enough to poke holes in the scientific aspect of the story, there is some stuff that stuck out to me. How did the Eridians even identify the Astrophage problem anyways? They can't see light and were unaware of radiation. I can't imagine they'd be able to identify IR radiation and figure out Astrophage is killing their star. Maybe there's something I missed but thought I would just include it here. Not a big issue in the slightest. I wouldn't let a small hole be too big of an issue anyways.
Overall, this is an enjoyable sci fi book but not anything too crazy. I feel like my ratings for books will be skewed way higher than my ratings for tv shows or movies. Books take way more effort to complete compared to movies and tv shows, so if a book doesn't capture me or I can tell that it's going to be bad, then I am way more likely to just shelve it instead of finishing and rating it. If I were to be less subjective, this book is more like a 3.5/5, but I am subjective and I am willing to overlook its flaws since it was fun to read.