A review by diazona
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

adventurous funny hopeful inspiring tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

I thought this was a fantastic story that lives up to all the hype! It started off with a rather uncomfortable scene, but it was all uphill from there; it didn't take me long at all to get invested in the plot and start relating to the main character. The book made very effective use of frequent flashbacks, essentially setting up two parallel storylines, one in the present and one in the past; as a reader, you can feel some of the uncertainty that the main character is experiencing as he tries to recover his memories, and as he does so, you get the same flashes of excitement when you (as the reader) make connections between details in his flashbacks and things that were mentioned earlier in the book. I also really appreciated the attention to detail; even the measurements and calculations are almost entirely consistent with real-world physics.

I especially thought the part where the main character and his alien buddy are learning to communicate and work with each other was quite well thought out - not 100% realistic, I'm sure, but definitely much more plausible than how that topic is usually treated in scifi.


This is taking its place as one of my favorite scifi novels.
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