Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsBack to his best
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 November 2021
Like many, many others, I LOVED ‘The Martian’ and was then extremely disappointed by ‘Artemis’. I also read ‘Randomize’ for good measure and gave it a 1 star review. At that point I thought ‘The Martian’ was a one-off fluke and that my time with Andy Weir was up but I started reading some really, really positive reviews about ‘Project Hail Mary’, so good that I couldn’t ignore them as I still had the thrill of ‘The Martian’ with me so I started on ‘Project Hail Mary’ and I WAS HOOKED!
Like ‘The Martian’, ‘Project Hail Mary’ has one main character and he wakes up in an odd situation. Ryland Grace wakes up naked in a spaceship light years from Earth, lying down on a bed, surrounded by cameras, wearing a breathing mask and connected to more tubes than he can count. He also cannot remember anything about himself or how he got there. Through flashbacks scattered throughout the book, we learn more about Ryland and how he ended up in this situation and what this means for Earth and the human race.
OK, wow, where do I start? I was hopeful that this would be as gripping as ‘The Martian’ but I was not prepared for the emotional pull. The blend of maths and science with emotion and humour was wonderful. ‘Project Hail Mary’ is smart, complex and entertaining but it is also thrilling, witty, imaginative and emotionally stirring. This is so much more than a science story, it’s about hope and finding connections in the most unlikely of places, it’s about overcoming fear and adversity and digging deep and rising to the challenge.
I am not going to pretend that I understood all of the science and I can’t comment on how accurate it might be but Ryland was a great character - very, very similar to Mark Watney in ‘The Martian’ but I found myself liking Ryland more. The story flows well and we’re never stuck in any one situation for too long. I don’t want to give too much away but the supporting characters are brilliant also. To really get the best out of this book I think you need to take some of the interactions and situations with a pinch of salt and just enjoy them for what they are, go with the flow.
It’s obvious how wonderfully nerdy Andy Weir is and it’s also obvious how happy random science stuff makes him and that enthusiasm is infectious. Andy Weir is back in full force and I’m ridiculously happy about that and cannot wait to see what he comes up with next.