Name: Project Hail Mary
Series: Stand Alone
Author: Andy Weir
Publisher: Audible Studios
Format: Audiobook
Genres: Adult, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure
Rating: New Member of the 6 Star club!
Synopsis: Goodreads
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission – and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
His crew-mates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, he realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Alone on this tiny ship that’s been cobbled together by every government and space agency on the planet and hurled into the depths of space, it’s up to him to conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.
And thanks to an unexpected ally, he just might have a chance.
Review:
“Amaze amaze amaze!”
I will warn you – this is a new God Tier book, and that means this review is long because I have a lot of feelings about this book – mainly how everyone should read it, but let’s get into it.
So, I (much like the rest of the internet, it seems) got swept up into the Project Hail Mary craze. I heard that the audiobook was really good and I wanted a break after finishing Iron Gold (given that in order to listen to the Graphic Audios you need two credits per book) and Project Hail Mary seemed like a good choice.
It was an excellent choice! I was hooked right from the start because of the almost humour of Rhyland Grace as he comes out of a coma and tries to figure out who he is, where he is and what is going on… As the memories slowly return to him, he realises he is trying to save humanity…
I don’t know how to talk about Project Hail Mary without spoiling things – but what I will say is the reaosn I hadn’t read it earlier was simply because I thought it was a science fiction / horror and I just wasn’t interested in that. If you, like me, were putting off this because you too thought it was a science-y horror, I’m pleased to tell you it absolutely isn’t! It’s a science fiction adventure!
We spend the entire book in the head of Rhyland Grace, and as I have already said his humour is excellent (I think it’s really helped by the narrator of the audiobook too!) but he’s also just incredibly smart! So, when all the ‘science-y’ stuff got going, I got concerned that I was going to get a bit lost… And whilst the science didn’t exactly make sense to me, it was certainly presented in a way that meant I could either follow along or was kind of clear that it was just Grace nerding out and so I could kind of ignore it and trust it was accurate/real. Weir didn’t leave the reader just hanging constantly with the science – some of it was almost ‘translated’ into relatively normal terms via other character reactions to Grace (often with a funny undertone to it, at least made to feel that way from the narrator).
“Fist my bump!”
I really think it is impossible, especially if you listened to the audiobook, to not come out of Project Hail Mary loving the relationship between our main characters. It’s non romantic, it’s truly a tale of two best friends against all odds. And I quite simply loved it. At the point of me writing this review, we’re a few days on from me having finished Project Hail Mary and I think about it and them daily.
Spoilers about the second main character.
“I am scary space monster. You are leaky space blob.”
I couldn’t write this review without talking about Rocky. He has been dotted throughout the review in terms of quotes that I adored from him (me and like everyone else in the world!) I don’t think he is ever truly supposed to be considered scary, but the initial description of this giant rock spider would have been to me if I hadn’t already seen fan art of the movie’s Rocky. And yet, I loved him faster than I think I loved Rhyland Grace – which was both pretty damn fast. From the moment communication (even without words) Rocky had completely captured my heart – and Rhyland became that much better because of how he interacted with Rocky!
And any emotional moment that almost had me crying / did have me crying came from Rocky. And he’s a rock space alien! I simply love him – the audiobook allows you to hear one interpretation of how his species sounds and I loved it – especially towards the end of the book where his language is more intergrated into the sentences. Rocky alone gets 6 stars.
This is another one of those audiobooks that I cannot fault – it is an Audible original and so only on Audible but it is 100% worth listening to. I know without a doubt I will do immersive reads of this in the future, and I know this audiobook has been added to my list of comfort books – they’re the ones I may not listen to all the way through, but if I am having a hard time with life, they’re the audiobooks that go on that I can escape away with and simply love… And Project Hail Mary will without a doubt be one of those books.
I don’t think I had really high expectations going into this one, but rather there was such a hype around this book that in the first instance, meant I heard about it in the first place, but secondly, the hype and the upcoming movie gave me the push I needed to read it. I am going to be forever grateful for that, because this is one of those books that has forever changed my brain chemistry. It absolutely deserves the 6 stars, and initiation into my 6 star club.
“You poked it with a stick?”
“No!” I said. “Well. Yes. But it was a scientific poke with a very scientific stick.”
Reading With Tyler 
Leave a comment