Book Review: Project Hail Mary

I’m back with a new book review! If you saw my Instagram stories then you might’ve seen my post Friday night explaining why I didn’t have any new posts. Well, I ended up in the hospital Thursday night and spent a couple days there. I’m doing better now and so now as I rest up at home, in the midst of a out of nowhere blizzard, I’m catching up on the posts that were meant to go up while I was unable to post them. First up is my book review for Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.

I read and loved The Martian years ago and Project Hail Mary has been on my radar for a while. I’ve seen a lot of people rave about the book and my interest in it became renewed when I saw the movie is going to be coming out. I actually haven’t watched any of the trailers for it because a few people have told me the trailers give away major twists in the book. So I finally read it last week and I really liked it!

I do think I would’ve loved it more if it wasn’t so hyped up for me, but I did still really like it. The novel follows Ryland Grace, who wakes up on a space ship with no memory and the only one still alive in a 3 person crew. As he tries to figure out where he is and why he’s in space, his memory slowly starts to return.

He is a molecular biologist who quit his job as a scientist after getting mad at the community over some criticisms and became a junior high science teacher. When the science community starts to buzz about a weird streak of light they are seeing between Venus and the Sun and it coinciding with the sun’s light dimming. After a sample is collected from this streak, the Petrova Line, and Ryland is recruited to help study it, they realize it is made up of a single-celled organism that Ryland has named “Astrophage”. Now they need to study this sample they have to find out as much as they can about it and find a crew to travel lightyears into space to figure out a way to kill it before it dims the sun’s light even further and put Earth at risk of an ice age.

I loved the premise of the book and all the science in it. I’m not a science person and Andy Weir has a way of making science so interesting to me! I loved Ryland and watching him figure things out. His friendship with Rocky, who is also trying to figure out a way to get rid of the Astrophage (I won’t say more about who Rocky is cause spoiler alert!) but their friendship was the best part of the book.

Some things I didn’t love about the book are: the way Ryland ended up on the crew. I really liked Stratt, his boss, for the most part because she was this badass woman who didn’t take no for an answer to save the world, but what she did to Ryland was messed up even if it was necessary; the other thing is even though I thought the ending was alright, (spoiler alert) I wanted Ryland to get more recognition for everything he did to save the world. Even if he didn’t make it back to Earth in the end, I wish he got in communication with them or something to make it known all he did for them. Justice for Ryland (and Rocky!)!

Overall, I loved the book, but since it was so hyped up for me and those 2 things that I didn’t love about the book I didn’t love it as much as I wanted to or thought I would. I would still see the movie and see how close it is to the book.

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