Reviews with content warning for Fire/Fire injury - Project Hail Mary

This was just a wonderful book, I didn't know anything about it going in besides that I had enjoyed the Martian and this definitely delivered on that same vibe. I was not prepared for

Alien friendship and can now mark this as "books that make me cry about alien spiders"

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asifsyed's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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thecrimsoncorsair's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Great book that kept me invested throughout. I loved, loved, loved Rocky; and his friendship with Grace - the MC. I honestly loved Rocky far more than I did Grace. Ryland Grace is pretty much your typical mary sue, self insert type that Weir loves to write. So Grace often got on my nerves. Dude's a junior high school science teacher. I don't care if he was once in higher academia, he's just too good at everything he does. It got pretty annoying at times. But overall, I ignored it because I wanted to know what was going to happen, and if everything was going to work out. There were a few issues that were grating. One, it was a little too USA, USA, USA! At times. And there's one particular line about the US military being soooooo amazing that made me want to gag, but it is sparing. I just don't recall there being this much America-riding in his other books. I don't know, it was pretty bad when it happened though. Two, I'm not perfect at writing, but I'm also not an author. I noticed two very glaring errors in the book, and I couldn't believe it. One was so obvious I'm honestly shocked it got by multiple editors. I accept errors in self published books, or lower end books. It's to be expected. But from a book at Weir's level, it was kinda bothersome. Three, there was a lot of diversity. Multiple different people from multiple countries. I will give him that. But I swear to god they were all stereotypes of those countries. All of them. It was driving me nuts, and then my hunch was reinforced when he introduced the most stereotypical Canadian imaginable, and even wrote his dialogue with Canadian inflection. Lol. Dude. You can do so much better with international characters. I mean come on. Other than those small gripes I was immersed in the plot. I was immersed in the characters, and even the technobabble was interesting to read. With a little bit of overexplanation, but that's pretty typical of his books. The absolute best part, and where this book shined was the relationship between Rocky and Grace. And just for that alone, the book was absolutely worth the read.

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mlwe's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Summary:
"What's two plus two?"
"What's two plus two?"
"Incorrect. What's two plus two?"

Do you know the answer? Because the protagonist of Project Hail Mary certainly doesn't; he can't even remember his name! Thus, we are taken on an adventure. Who is this character? Where did he come from? And, maybe more importantly, where is he going? As pieces of events and flashes of memory return (in the form of non-chronological storytelling), the readers begin to construct the plot, returning to the present to affirm conclusions with the protagonist. As reality begins to take shape for the protagonist, the readers must confront the best and worst parts of humanity, and how we have both the ability to save our world and the power to destroy it all.

My Thoughts:
The author excels at creating passionate, well-rounded characters that are easy to love (and hate!). I read the book fairly quickly, as the plot is constantly developing. The slowest parts of the book are the first chapter, since we are thrown in media res, and a couple of pages of world-building which are needed to foreshadow later events. The time jumps are clearly illustrated (new chapters, section breaks, explicitly stated), and they do not cause confusion or pull the reader away from the story. The science is well explained. Although it is a significant portion of the story, readers could skim the explanations and rely on the protagonist's summaries, if desired.

Some complaints include all the plot lines. While the story reached a definite conclusion, I was not satisfied with all the resolutions. <Specifically, I felt navigating the ups and downs of life and water was ultimately unnecessary. Likewise, discovering Stratt's criminal actions and learning about Grace's teaching on Erid felt rushed.> Therefore, the ending was a bit of a miss for me.

I'll reread the book one day, if only to meet Rocky again.

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jj_tj's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging funny informative mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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bomenvernietiger's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.5

I respect the general goal of making approachable but accurate science media, but when I set aside that appreciation for a moment and hold this book to the standard of anything else I read, it simply doesn't hold up.

There's a really interesting and well thought out plot, but it's massively dampened by the many little mistakes and plot-holes, prose that sounds like it came from a drunk text message, an overly light-hearted and casual tone that doesn't fit the story, a boring main character, events that are often way too plot-convenient, annoying humour, cheesy dialogue, and Andy Weir's stubborn unwillingness to explain or do research into anything that doesn't adhere to his highly specific personal interests. This last flaw is clear from his refusal to get into any substantial world politics even though a third of his book is supposed to be about international cooperation, and his _extremely_ half-assed attempt to conceptualise a pitch&harmony-based alien language, which contained mistakes which could only be possible if Weir did not consult a single semi-professional musician or musicologist before publishing.

This could have been an amazing hard scifi that teaches people about physics and astronomy, but it's written in such a way that the science never really matters; whenever there's a plot issue Weir's science can't solve, it's either glossed over or splattered with plot convenience sauce (aka 'xenonite'). It could have also been a nice, silly, emotionally deep, feel-good soft scifi, but the characters and the prose are way too dull for that, and anything heartfelt about the book is drowned in constant scientific explanations. Both of these ideas would have been great stories, but they were smashed together and the result is a mess.

This is extra sad considering Andy Weir can write something as good as The Martian. But looking back, the Martian already contained the cracks in Weir's storytelling which became full-on rifts

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