Author: Andy Weir
# of Pages: 476 (hardback)
Genre: Adult, Science Fiction, Adventure
Rating: ★★★★☆
Synopsis: 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, he realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Alone on this tiny ship that's been cobbled together by every government and space agency on the planet and hurled into the depths of space, it's up to him to conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And thanks to an unexpected ally, he just might have a chance.
Review: I loved The Martian, so I was really looking forward to this book!
The story is told in first person - I've come to realize this is the perfect POV for Weir's books because it's the only way for the protagonists humorous internal thoughts to shine through. The only aspect of this that I didn't like was the time skipping that happened throughout the entire book. The time skips worked out a little better in this book than others since the reader gets to truly experience Grace's POV and his experience of recalling his lost memories. However, the classic problem still stands where I want to learn more about the main plot but end up having to trudge through pages of a flashback.
This leads to the second problem; the first 100-150 pages were really hard for me to get through. I started reading this book a while ago, but it ended up sitting around untouched for long stretches of time just because the beginning part of the book wasn't interesting enough for me to really get into the book. If anyone else has the same problem, I encourage you to push through because the rest of the book went REALLY fast. It's a very gripping story that has a good mix of suspense, despair, humor, and camaraderie.
A lot of the science went over my head; I'm not sure if it's just because this book is longer, but it seemed like there were more scientific explanations in Project Hail Mary than The Martian. I have to admit there was a lot I ended up skimming over (some parts I just wanted to know what happens next, with less interest on the exact science behind how it's happening).
Highly recommend giving this book a read. Although it's not my favorite book, I definitely enjoyed it.
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