Book Review | Project Hail Mary

Ryland Grace wakes up aboard a spaceship with two dead crewmembers beside him and no recollection of how or why he got there. Then slowly he begins to put the pieces together. He was placed in a medically-induced coma and he’s on a desperate mission to save Earth from another Ice Age and mass extinction.

I really enjoyed this one! Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir is an absolute celebration of science and human ingenuity, filled with humor and heart.

It also takes an interesting spin of the alien first contact trope. Instead of sentient, human-eating alien predators, humanity’s threat is tiny invasive space algae that are eating our sun’s energy. You can’t shoot them or ask them to leave, so now it’s up to Ryland to get creative and figure out how to get rid of them.

Lastly, I think it’s important to note that this is very much a hard science fiction novel. It’s got a lot of scientific exposition in it. If you’re a science nerd, you’ll probably geek out over this one, but for others, it may make the book more difficult to get into. I admit that it’s been a while since I took a physics class, so some of the science went over my head, but I just nodded along, like, yeah, that sounds about right.

All and all, I’d say this book is very tonally similar to Andy’s previous novel The Martian. It ultimately chooses scientific hope and optimism in the face of despair, and that I think is beautiful.

Thank you, NetGalley and Ballantine Books, for providing with me and ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Book Details:

Publication Date : May 4, 2021
Publisher : Ballantine Books
ISBN : 0593135202
Pages : 496

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