TBR Pile Review: Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

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 crewmates 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.

Part scientific mystery, part dazzling interstellar journey, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian–while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.

My Review

This is a review of both the hardback and the audiobook. I have both. There’s a totally normal reason for that.

Absolutely nothing to do with my completist tendencies at all.

I bought a signed first edition of the hardback from Goldsboro Books and was enjoying it so much I wanted to carry on, but it’s a big book and I’m told it’s not safe to walk down the street reading, so I got the audiobook.

The hardback has an illustration that makes total sense by chapter 23. It also has two line drawings of the Hail Mary, showing how it works. It’s rather clever. There’s something of the old-school sci-fi about the novel, strongly tinged with modern understandings of physics and thoughts about evolution and the origins of life. It is a novel about friendship and putting survival or many before your own desires.

I enjoyed the way we slowly learn more about Dr Ryland Grace as he regains his memory and learns about himself. I found the friendship between Ryland and Rocky, the alien from Epsilon Eridani 3 really touching. The effort to understand each other and communicate across species and sense boundaries is well handled. If only humans were prepared to make as much effort with each other.

This book is original and fun. I think it will appeal to Weir’s established fanbase and probably to hard sci-fi fans for it’s plausibility and strong science use.

Audiobook review – narrator: Ron Porter

As I may have mentioned before, I think Ron Porter is an excellent narrator. He does all the voices and accents, and gives each character personality. There were times, however, when I was certain I had heard the voice before – his Dutch Ms Stratt sounds an awful lot like Irishwoman, Dr Bridget in the Bobiverse books. There were times I thought I was listening to a Bobiverse book, the humour and characterisation is similar.

Still, excellent audiobook.