Reviews tagging 'Grief'

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

87 reviews

laynerinke's review

adventurous lighthearted tense fast-paced

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

4.25

So fun, fast and heartwarming. I recommended it to my whole family. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Grief and Cursing

jstilts's review

adventurous hopeful mysterious tense 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

3.75

Not as good as "The Martian", but what is? Andy Weir's latest novel is hard to review without spoiling the plot, especially as the lead is amnesiac - slowly revealing the backstory as more pressing events unfold. So comparing it to his previous work is probably the best I can do.

What I can say is compared to The Martian this is much more speculative forward-looking SciFi disaster novel that borders on the fantastical - which is fun and well done, so long as you can get past the first few chapters that may have you wondering if this is a light re-tread of The Marrian. It's not, but it's fair to say it shares similar themes of isolation and problem solving, but of a distinctly different flavour.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Medical content, Suicidal thoughts, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, and Kidnapping

triple_m's review against another edition

adventurous funny tense medium-paced

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

4.5

Highly recommend the audiobook, the voice actor is incredible and the 🎶 are delightful. Legitimately funny and I think it being in audio added to the humor.

This isn’t a book that I would normally read but I’m glad I gave it a chance. There’s definitely some science-dense sections but the author does a great job about rephrasing and dumbing down the topics so it’s easy to understand. 

a really wholesome story and I still smile when I think about it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Confinement, and Death

Minor: Gun violence, Suicide, Excrement, Grief, and Suicidal thoughts

s_green217's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad 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? It's complicated

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Injury/Injury detail, Suicide, and Grief

Minor: Drug use, Alcohol, and Confinement

jenropell's review

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted tense slow-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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Confinement, Addiction, Grief, Medical content, Death, and Suicidal thoughts

corallydeer's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious 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

5.0

This book was absolutely fantastic. I read it in tandem with the audiobook in a book club setting alongside my husband and it was such a great time. As far as the book itself is concerned, I truly adored the whole story and was glued to it the entire time. As a note: I have not read The Martian (yet) and have only seen the movie, so I can't speak to any comparisons between the two books. I did see in previous reviews that some people felt like Grace was pretty much the same character as Mark Watney just rebranded as a

quirky school teacher

, and while I do agree with this point I don't feel like it detracted from the story at all. If anything I felt like blending that personality with someone who's

a teacher

was incredibly fitting and made it extremely relatable as someone who

works in education

.

I loved all of the directions the story took and the details; every time I felt like I had a handle on where the story was going it would throw a slight curveball and I'd be glued to my chair trying to figure out what in the world was going to happen. I adored

Rocky

so so much as a character; my husband and I both loved that

he wasn't a stereotypical humanoid alien

as well and the details describing him were incredibly well done. The relationship between the two characters was hilarious and heartfelt and left my husband and I crying in the car on multiple occasions. I strongly agreed with this one comment on a Tiktok video about the book by someone named Amanda that said:

"

The way Grace went from being forced to sacrifice himself for humanity to voluntarily doing it for Rocky [...]

"

This book truly left such a wonderful impression and is easily getting categorized into the books I wish I could read again with no memory and will easily be a reread-er for me.

As an additional review for the audiobook: I 100% recommend that everyone try out the audiobook either in tandem with the book or on its own. It's easily one of the best audiobooks I've ever listened to and was so masterfully done. The way that they did

Rocky's dialogue

was phenomenal and blew my husband and I's minds. And we were blown away by the level of emotion that the narrator put into Grace's parts. It was truly an amazing part of the whole experience for us!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Grief, Suicide, Confinement, Death, and Suicidal thoughts

Moderate: Drug use, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, and Kidnapping

Minor: Excrement, Blood, Cancer, Vomit, Panic attacks/disorders, Murder, Sexism, Cannibalism, Cursing, War, Animal cruelty, and Sexual content

Confinement

(Grace is technically confined on a pretty small spaceship throughout most of the book and is also forcefully confined in a cell in a later part of the book)

| Death

(death is an extremely large part of this book since it's focused on a suicide mission)

| Grief

(Grace experiences detailed grief over the loss of his crewmates and his own impending death)

| Medical Content

(there are various bits of described medical situations including blood draws, the use of the Nannybot, catheters, etc)

| Suicidal Thoughts & Suicide

(one of the primary plot points of the book is that the Hail Mary mission is a suicide mission; the main character regularly thinks about this and it comes up in detail in a number of flashbacks)

| Alcohol

(recreational drinking is described on a few different occasions, including for celebrations)

| Drug Use

(one of the astronauts on the Hail Mary mission requests a recreational drug to use up until committing suicide upon completion of the mission)

| Fire/Fire Injury

(Grace experiences chemical burns from ammonia and fire is depicted in a few situations)

| Gun Violence

(one of the astronauts on the Hail Mary mission requests a gun for his preferred method of suicide upon the completion of the mission)

| Injury/Injury Detail

(there are a number of injuries experienced and sustained throughout the book)

| Kidnapping

(Grace is revealed to have been forced onto the Hail Mary mission and is essentially kidnapped and confined for this)

| Animal Cruelty

(the Nannybot arms on the Hail Mary are revealed later on to have been perfected through animal experimentation)

| Blood

(there are minor depictions of blood through blood draws and at the beginning of the book with the removal of the catheter)

| Cancer

(there are minor references to cancer in relation to radiation and exposure)

| Cannibalism

(it is revealed in the very last chapter that for Grace to survive on Erid the Eridians eventually learned how to clone his muscle cells and produce meat for him so he is essentially experiencing self-cannibalism)

| Cursing

(Grace pretty much never curses due to his habits as a teacher, but other characters curse a bit)

| Excrement

(there is the usual understanding of where drinking water comes from on the Hail Mary ship [recycled and treated urine] and later on there is mention of "poop" related to the waste coming from the Taumoeba cells)

| Murder

(it's revealed later in the book that Stratt forced Grace to go on the Hail Mary mission to which he accuses her of murdering him since he doesn't want to go)

| Panic Attacks/Disorders

(Grace experiences a panic attack when first exposed to zero g's on the Hail Mary)

| Sexism

(Stratt reveals during the Hail Mary astronaut selection process that she specifically put the call out for heterosexual men because she didn't want to deal with potential sexual tension on the mission, this is called out and results in a bit of back-and-forth)

| Sexual Content

(some of the astronauts that volunteered for the Hail Mary mission openly discuss their sexual escapades in relation to enjoying their finals days alive on Earth)

| Vomit

(periodically there are small bits of depicted vomit like when Grace enters zero g for the first time or experiences painfully high g's)

| War

(there is passing speculation throughout the book about the potentials for widespread war on Earth while Grace is in space trying to save the planet, but we never see any of it as the reader)

jasminrain's review

adventurous challenging medium-paced

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

4.0

I really enjoyed this one. I cannot say that Weir is a phenomenal author when it comes to the use of language or creating characters - original ones at least - but his world-building and storytelling are phenomenala. I had no knowledge about the book prior to reading it and I ended up really enjoying it. In particular, the interspecies relationships with aliens and the non-human centric themes of the book were phenomenal. Would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in space and dystopian novels.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Kidnapping

Minor: Suicide and Grief

singalana's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

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

3.75

If you liked Andy Weir’s first book, The Martian, you’ll probably like this one, too.

Our protagonist, Ryland Grace, wakes up and has no memory of where he is, who he is and how he ended up there. The story is told in a dual timeline: in the past timeline, we slowly find out how Ryland ended up there, and in the present timeline, we follow Ryland’s struggle to fulfil his mission. And his mission is no less than to save humanity.

Project Hail Mary is science fiction, with a heavy emphasis on the science part. I found this book to be much more speculative than The Martian. But even though it focuses a lot on the science aspect, I still feel that these books are very accessible. The story felt original, interesting and, in a way, optimistic. 

Even though the plot is different, this book feels very similar to The Martian. Let’s take our main character for example: he is basically the same as the protagonist in The Martian. And the writing style and sense of humour are exactly the same. I didn’t mind too much, but I expected some growth from the author, and I don’t think I would be able to handle a third book with exactly the same protagonist and writing style.

Before we head into spoiler territory, my overall thoughts about this book were that the premise was interesting, it was easy to read and follow, and it was a relatively quick read. Sometimes, I felt frustrated because of the past timeline because I was more interested in the present timeline. 

Spoilers!

This is a first-contact story, and I think it’s quite an optimistic one at that. I found the aliens and their physiology and behaviour interesting. What I didn’t like that much was the dialogue (especially towards the end). I kind of get it because the alien learns language from the main character, but since I’m not a huge fan of the main character, it’s a bit annoying.

In the past timeline, there have been annoying stereotypes about other nationalities.

But the ending had a few things going for it: I liked the way the past timeline ended (the final reveal), and I liked the (sort of) open ending. Also, the ending had a sort of circularity, which was interesting but not the strongest point of the book.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Alcohol, Confinement, Medical trauma, Suicide, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Cursing, and Fire/Fire injury

brynalexa's review

adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring sad tense fast-paced

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

4.75

I waited on this book because I don’t usually read books by white men. I gave in and got it on Libby and was immediately hooked. How can a book so serious be so funny and adorable?!  There’s almost nothing I can say about setting or characters that make isn’t a spoiler but both are phenomenal. I could barely put this down. 

Just a couple notes, one chapter used “stupid” more than a dozen times which is completely unnecessary (cloudy, tired, drugged, distracted, not 100% were all perfectly fine options) I also disagree with the author’s choice

on using he/him when gendering Rocky. The author even mentioned it being a choice and then when he got more information decided to stick with He/him. What a wonderful opportunity it could have been to be more inclusive.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Alcohol, Confinement, Fire/Fire injury, Forced institutionalization, Death, Grief, and Suicide

Minor: Sexual content, Sexism, Cannibalism, Ableism, and Vomit

lizziaha's review against another edition

• Strong character development? Yes

3.0

This book was just boring to me. I had to fight to stay focused during the science parts, I didn’t feel that much connection with the main character(s), and the writing wasn’t anything to write home about. The parts I was most invested in were the flashback scenes because I was curious to see how Ryland ended up on the mission in the first place. This was the shining star of the book in my opinion, because it really highlights the character growth that he goes through. (And the plot twisty nature of it doesn’t hurt.) And I’ll admit it, it makes the emotional climax of the book hit that much harder. I was in tears (something that usually doesn’t happen while I’m listening to audiobooks). 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Medical content, Medical trauma, Blood, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Fire/Fire injury, Death, Kidnapping, Murder, and Suicide

Minor: War, Drug use, Gun violence, Alcohol, Cannibalism, and Sexism