Book Review: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

My review [Minor SPOILER ALERT!]-

This is the second book I read by Andy Weir and boy it manages to surpass The Martian IMO. I loved The Martian. And I loved Project Hail Mary even more!

The story starts with our protagonist Ryland Grace waking up from an induced coma-like condition in Space. He’s in a spaceship far away from Solar System on a project to save humanity from a disaster caused by an alien lifeform. As he starts to make sense of his surroundings, we get flashbacks of the story of his life on Earth and how he gets “pursued” to join the project. The two stories –
the current situation in outer space; and the one with flashbacks of his life just before he boards the ship – are being told in parallel. I was really invested in both, actually more so in his current situation. I find his current situation in the outer space so much interesting as it involved a lot of science.

There is one thing I really liked about this character – Eva Stratt – staying highly focused on the execution of the project. I appreciate the inner drive/passion to implement tasks, make quick and strong decisions to ensure the project is a success.

I never saw an alien coming into the picture! Usually, the inclusion of aliens in fiction doesn’t interest me much, as they have vague ideas with weird powers and stuff with not much explanation, but this story is different. Over the course of the book, I feel attached to the alien. I really empathise with it when it shows signs of sadness.

This feeling of attachment and the science (physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, geology, evolution etc) + engineering, of course, made me love this book so much! I loved the exchange of science, engineering and culture between Ryland and the Alien.

Andy Weir writes some amazing sci-fi. I read this book on Kindle as well as the audiobook on Audible. Ray Porter, the narrator, really did an amazing job with this one! I could almost imagine the entire story as if I was living in it. I hope they make a movie that can live up to the top notch quality of the story.

My Goodreads rating : 5/5 ⭐️

Highly recommend!