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A review by zenandroid
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
1.0
This is a frustratingly frustrating book.
Came with high expectation, expected at least *some* quality.
Instead, all i got was this.
Charitably, it simply did not work out for me as a reader, because it had some of my pet peeves or linear combination of tropes or plots that don't appeal to me as a reader.
Uncharitably, this is a incompetently crafted, suspension-of-disbelief defying clusterfuck of a narrative.
Pretty good plot, and I love love love the problem-solving aspect, the speculative science is cool, ill give it that if only it wasn't so riddled and laden with some braincell-killing bullshit; like the characters, if you want to call them that, the alien(s) (basically humans with weird suits), the plot convenience that is a direct, immediate global coordination, and some other stuff.
Also, lazy writing, bad world-building.
I will just list some things that irritated me:
- Stratt, okay so what the fuck? Major plot convenience anyone? What and how the fuck did this person got to where she is? All of the world's governments just up and immediately coordinated in a never before seen effort to curb this? oOooOoohhh I SEE it's because of the 'urgency' of the situation right right, because that's going to go perfectly well and not generate any religious or political or societal upheaval huh? oh what's that it WILL? but it'll only be mentioned once and not even taken seriously?, oh okay i see i see. and her authority will not ever be questioned and she can straight up just do whatever she wants okay perfect.
- the main character is a scientist and all of his collaborators are as well but he still feels the need to explain everything to them?, oh he also gets briefing whenever the plot needs it and it's not even mentioned that they have been briefed prior to the scene in the book and this isn't a professional issue and it's just like whatever? and of course he references the fact that he is a high-school teacher again and again to justify the fact that he has knowledge of some thing, not the fact that he is an honest-to-god scientist? nice, oh and he is an adult with the mentality of a retarded teenager, with the shitty humor to boot?, and his narration is filled with xD humor? wonderful
- oh we meet an alien who is barely different? he learns the language relatively quickly even though it's almost a different modality entirely? he shies away from showing the protag how they eat because he says it is disgusting? why does he think that? does he have like an intuition on how the human mind functions that he didn't tell protag about, oh so he just- oh okay he just straight up assumes it would disgust this alien lifeform to him even though presumably everyone in his home planet does the same and it should be a natural occurrence i see i see.
And some other things, idk, if i had more time i would have written a shorter, more concise review, but this shit ain't worth, already stolen 12 hours of my life, and more as this review is
This story has some good ideas, and it would have been so much better if some things just got handled differently.
RE: Lazy writing: Aside from the fact that the author could have AT LEAST paid lip service to the fact that international cooperation is hard and nigh fucking impossible and blablabla, the author could have at least MENTIONED some GOD-DAMNED DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE CULTURES AND THE HABITS OF the alien-spiders when the protag decided to go and LIVE there >:(
Fucking hype man.
And you go to goodreads, at the time of speaking there is a one star review (which i agree with for the most part), and one comment goes like:
```
This book was amazing lol. Though if youre not a science person and cant grasp the concepts, i could see how one would hate it.
```
lol, lmao, okay, good argument senator, very good arguement, no rebuttal for anything brought up in the critique, nothing, just ... OF COURSE SHE JUST DIDNT UNDERSTAND GUYS
The rest of the comments aren't better either, oh well.
1/5: slightly better than three body problem, very painful reading experience, not as painful as the headache i get when people say that this is the future of hard sci-fi, yuck.
i cant take anyone that recommend this seriously
Came with high expectation, expected at least *some* quality.
Instead, all i got was this.
Charitably, it simply did not work out for me as a reader, because it had some of my pet peeves or linear combination of tropes or plots that don't appeal to me as a reader.
Uncharitably, this is a incompetently crafted, suspension-of-disbelief defying clusterfuck of a narrative.
Pretty good plot, and I love love love the problem-solving aspect, the speculative science is cool, ill give it that if only it wasn't so riddled and laden with some braincell-killing bullshit; like the characters, if you want to call them that, the alien(s) (basically humans with weird suits), the plot convenience that is a direct, immediate global coordination, and some other stuff.
Also, lazy writing, bad world-building.
I will just list some things that irritated me:
- Stratt, okay so what the fuck? Major plot convenience anyone? What and how the fuck did this person got to where she is? All of the world's governments just up and immediately coordinated in a never before seen effort to curb this? oOooOoohhh I SEE it's because of the 'urgency' of the situation right right, because that's going to go perfectly well and not generate any religious or political or societal upheaval huh? oh what's that it WILL? but it'll only be mentioned once and not even taken seriously?, oh okay i see i see. and her authority will not ever be questioned and she can straight up just do whatever she wants okay perfect.
- the main character is a scientist and all of his collaborators are as well but he still feels the need to explain everything to them?, oh he also gets briefing whenever the plot needs it and it's not even mentioned that they have been briefed prior to the scene in the book and this isn't a professional issue and it's just like whatever? and of course he references the fact that he is a high-school teacher again and again to justify the fact that he has knowledge of some thing, not the fact that he is an honest-to-god scientist? nice, oh and he is an adult with the mentality of a retarded teenager, with the shitty humor to boot?, and his narration is filled with xD humor? wonderful
- oh we meet an alien who is barely different? he learns the language relatively quickly even though it's almost a different modality entirely? he shies away from showing the protag how they eat because he says it is disgusting? why does he think that? does he have like an intuition on how the human mind functions that he didn't tell protag about, oh so he just- oh okay he just straight up assumes it would disgust this alien lifeform to him even though presumably everyone in his home planet does the same and it should be a natural occurrence i see i see.
And some other things, idk, if i had more time i would have written a shorter, more concise review, but this shit ain't worth, already stolen 12 hours of my life, and more as this review is
This story has some good ideas, and it would have been so much better if some things just got handled differently.
RE: Lazy writing: Aside from the fact that the author could have AT LEAST paid lip service to the fact that international cooperation is hard and nigh fucking impossible and blablabla, the author could have at least MENTIONED some GOD-DAMNED DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE CULTURES AND THE HABITS OF the alien-spiders when the protag decided to go and LIVE there >:(
Fucking hype man.
And you go to goodreads, at the time of speaking there is a one star review (which i agree with for the most part), and one comment goes like:
```
This book was amazing lol. Though if youre not a science person and cant grasp the concepts, i could see how one would hate it.
```
lol, lmao, okay, good argument senator, very good arguement, no rebuttal for anything brought up in the critique, nothing, just ... OF COURSE SHE JUST DIDNT UNDERSTAND GUYS
The rest of the comments aren't better either, oh well.
1/5: slightly better than three body problem, very painful reading experience, not as painful as the headache i get when people say that this is the future of hard sci-fi, yuck.
i cant take anyone that recommend this seriously