I alwayy can rely on Weir for interesting cinematic feeling SF and Project Hail Mary fits the bill! I had such a fun time and it’ll be an intriguing movie adaptation! Keep reading this book review of Project Hail Mary for my full thoughts.
Summary
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, 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?
Review
Project Hail Mary immediately draws you in. There’s a conversational tone to the narration. You can instantly hear this voice in your head. What’s more, Project Hail Mary begins with disorientation. You immediately want to know what happened, why is he here, and what does he know. Turns out not that much. As the novel unfolds, the flashbacks of his memories returning paint a story about the downfall of humanity, but also their hope. These fragments slowly come back to you as you piece it all together. I am a sucker for well done flashbacks and while Project Hail Mary certainly relies on them, I enjoyed it!
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You begin to piece together this story of resilience, despair, setbacks, and hope. I always love being carried along by the science of Weir’s books and Project Hail Mary is no different. I think I enjoyed The Martian (mostly because the audiobook was phenomenal) and I was spoiled by a big reveal by the trailer of this one. But I had such a fun time with Project Hail Mary and it made me care about [redacted] more than I ever thought I would. I think it’s because while these books are SF stories with ships and planets, Weir’s books are rooted in these stories about hope, humans coming together, and finding the pieces of ourselves, and society, which believe. There’s something hopeful about it which I’ve been having a hard time believing in nowadays.
Find Project Hail Mary on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop. org, Blackwells, & Libro. fm.