Andy Weir definitely has a specific writing style and preferred method of telling a story. And that is a first-person narrative from the perspective of a human not on Earth, alone in some fashion, who is snarky/sarcastic, in a high tension situation with seemingly no way out, using copious amounts of humor to lighten the mood. And I’m here for it!
Project Hail Mary
Author: Andy Weir
Pages: 496
Format: Paperback
Published: May 4, 2021
Publisher: Ballantine Books
View on Goodreads
Date Completed: December 5, 2024
My rating: 
Thoughts
I went into this book with some trepidation. I see a lot of reviews where people say that Weir can’t live up to the high bar he set in The Martian. That all his heroes are the same, the situations too similar and the tone too light. After reading Artemis, I can kind of understand that. But I’m not a nay-sayer when it comes to Project Hail Mary. I say, hail yes!
Similar to previous books, we have a lone human survivor on a spaceship orbiting a star that is not Earth’s sun. He has no memory of who he is or why he’s there, but as his memory slowly returns to him, he recalls that he’s there to find information that could save humanity from near-extinction. No biggie, right? It’s not like this is a suicide mission… or is it?
I can certainly understand people being tired of such similar characters in Weir’s books. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the main character in Artemis, Jazz, as I felt she was over-the-top snarky – like he tried too hard with the humor in that book. But in Project Hail Mary, I feel like the tone of the story struck a good balance. The main character, Ryland Grace, was serious enough when the situation called for it, but also had a sort of gallows humor about the entire scenario that popped up just at the right moments.
One thing I thought this book did especially well was the non-linear storytelling. It seems like a lot of authors try this as a way to keep a story moving, but usually the author is traveling outside of the main story to catch the reader up. Probably to make sure they “show, don’t tell” when really all they’re doing is telling. But here, Grace starts off with no memory (the reason for which later comes to light through the non-linear storytelling). As he needs information, he basically has to meditate to remember what he needs to do or what led him to where he’s at. After the first few flashbacks, it became so fluid that I hardly noticed. And both storylines were engaging enough that I didn’t mind the switches.
Grace isn’t truly alone in this story – I’m betting that some people wouldn’t care for the way it plays out, but I really enjoyed it. I’m playing a little coy here to avoid spoilers, even though it’s something that goes on throughout a significant portion of the book. What I’ll say here is that I appreciated Weir’s ingenuity and scientific approach to this… this thing. I’m a big Star Trek fan, but sometimes it’s nice seeing something out of the box. I’ll be really curious to see how they tackle this for the movie.
This book was crazy hard for me to rate, but ultimately I couldn’t not give it 5 out of 5 stars. Does it live up to The Martian? In a lot of ways, yes. In fact, I might say this one surpassed The Martian for me and may currently be my favorite novel by Weir!
