This was just as much fun as The Martian! I did not enjoy Artemis, but this one is back to the "work the problem" formula that was so enjoyable. And it was funny!! I alternated between print and audio, the audio was excellent! HIGHLY recommend!

Is nerd humor a genre? It should be. And this book would be at the top of the list. I’ll leave the verifying all the scientificky stuff to the professionals but as just a good old fun read this was excellent. The relationship between Rocky and Grace might be one of the best friendship stories ever the description of learning each others languages was fascinating, the pacing was great. All and all a 5 star read for us sciency nerds.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC of Project Hail Mary!

I am honestly so impressed with this novel. I greatly enjoyed Weir's The Martian, but found myself struggling with Artemis, which led me to come into PHM with some doubt. That doubt, however, rapidly faded away as I was immersed into the story of Dr. Ryland Grace. There's so much I love about this novel it's hard to even choose what to highlight. As a science writer and editor myself, the care taken towards making the science clear and accessible was simply incredible, especially given how much of it there was! I particularly enjoyed the attention paid to biology, which does not tend to get featured so heavily in these kinds of stories.

I was also surprised at how invested I became in Grace's story, especially once he learns he's not necessarily as alone as he thought. Any time something went wrong, I legitimately feared for him and could not put the book down until I knew the situation would be resolved somehow. The dual storylines of Grace's past and present were also very engaging and presented equally compelling perspectives into his character. Ultimately, the novel was a moving exploration of human ingenuity and hope, one that sets it apart from Weir's other works. Project Hail Mary is easily one of my best reads of 2021, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to read it in advance.

This was a great story. While this book is about aliens, it has some similarities to The Martian which were the things that made The Martian so good- a funny, irreverent main character and lots of tense space travel.

Project Hail Mary is the most enjoyable book I've read this year. For anyone who loved Andy Weir's The Martian, this is a must-read. It is not a sequel to The Martian, but the lead character (and narrator) will remind you very much of the marooned astronaut Mark Watney: a resourceful scientist with a distinct snarky streak who is thrust into a situation in which survival depends upon flexibility and persistence and an abiding love of science. As a former science-fair nerd, I loved this guy, and every chapter was an absolute treat, so I prolonged the enjoyment by reading only small sections each night. I am tempted to reveal some key points about the plot, but I do not want to be the bearer of spoilers. If you like science fiction that has actual science in it, this is your book. If you prefer other kinds of fiction, you may like this anyway, and you will learn many interesting scientific facts that may come in handy if you should wake up in a deserted spaceship many light-years from home.

A man wakes up, alone with two corpses, in what he quickly discovers is a spaceship on a last-ditch mission to try to save the entire planet from sun-energy-devouring lifeforms. His goal: Tau Ceti, whose star somehow has fought off the infestation. Much science—and then engineering—follows. Even as he gets his memories back, there’s not much in the way of characterization, but if you like Boy Scouts in Space (in pretty much every sense you can imagine), you will probably like this.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor of an earth saving space mission. The sun is getting dimmer which will eventually cause world ending problems. It’s up to him to figure out how to stop it.. he’s just not sure how to complete the task on his own. The last thing he expects to happen in space is to find an ally to team up with it.

Andy Weir, are you some kind of science genius?! This book is smart! So smart that sometimes I had to look things up or re read. He’s either super smart or did a ton of research for this book. Probably both! Lol. I am so surprised that I haven’t seen more reviews for this one. It was so original, fun, epic, exciting, heart felt.. I seriously felt all the emotions while reading this. So if you’re in the mood to expect earth and go on a space odyssey.. this is your book!

Project Hail Mary
A Novel

By: Andy Weir

Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine

Ballantine Books

Mystery & Thrillers/ Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Publish Date May 4, 2021

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I really enjoyed this book and gave it 4 stars. I do have to warn you that this book is full of science and it is over baring. It does have a duel time line also.

This book is about the earth having some issues and they only have so much time to figure out what to do before it goes into another ice age period and will kill more than half the population. It takes them several years to figure out what they need to do to try to save the world.

Dr. Grace who ends up being the sole survivor on the aircraft has a lot of work to do but first he has to remember what he is doing in the space ship and why. He does figure it out and gets to work but the other two people who were with him ended up dying in their coma state and he didn't.

He has a few adventures before he meets up with my favorite character in the book, Rocky. Rocky is an alien and his world is having the same issues as Earth.

There is so much to tell but I really don't want to reveal anymore. You have to read the book to find out more and to see if they accomplish what they were sent out to do.

I just love the relationship between Rocky and Dr. Grace.

Published by Ballantine Books on May 4, 2021

I enjoyed the story told in Project Hail Mary. I would have enjoyed it more if not for sentences like “The force you feel in a centrifuge is inverse to the square of the radius.” Unfortunately, rules of science appear with exhausting regularity.

Andy Weir apparently decided he stumbled upon a successful formula with The Martian. In Project Hail Mary, he doubles down. Weir’s protagonist in The Martian famously decides to “science the shit out of” each problem he encounters. In Project Hail Mary, Weir’s protagonist scienced the shit out my patience. Weir rarely makes it through two pages before he finds some new principle of science that he absolutely must explain to the reader. Few of the principles do anything to advance the plot. Many of them are only marginally relevant to the story, meaning they could have been excised from the text without harming the plot, producing a much tighter story. Thanks to all the pauses to explain science, Project Hail Mary takes about 500 pages to tell a 200-page story.

Science lectures are not good science fiction. Explanations have their place, judiciously used. The reader needs to be served enough science to provide a context for what’s happening and why. But the science shouldn’t get in the way of moving the story forward. The giants who originated hard science fiction knew that. Isaac Asimov knew that. Arthur C. Clarke knew that. Robert Heinlein knew that. Most of their contemporaries knew that. Andy Weir doesn’t get it. Science lectures are not science fiction. Full stop.

Remove the incessant science lectures, including every sentence that follows “Hang on, let me do the math,” and what remains is a reasonably interesting plot. The sun is slowly dimming, a phenomenon that will lead to a new Ice Age in another few decades. The dimming is caused by an alien organism that the protagonist, Ryland Grace, dubs an astrophage. Grace discovers the organism after he’s drafted to join a science team that is focused on saving the Earth. Grace teaches junior high school science but he wrote a widely-ridiculed dissertation explaining that alien life forms might not require water to evolve or survive. He responded to the ridicule by abandoning his studies and taking a junior high teaching job, which makes him a bit of a weenie. We learn, if fact, that Grace is risk-averse to the point of cowardice. But he’s found the perfect job because lecturing a captive audience about science is what he does best.

The story begins with Grace waking up from a coma suffering from a selective memory loss. He doesn’t remember that he’s on a spaceship. He doesn’t know its mission. As time passes, he recovers his memories in linear fashion, from oldest to newest, which allows Weir to tell Grace’s backstory through Grace’s recovered memory while the story in the present moves forward. Weir offers a contrived explanation at the end for the memory loss and its slow recovery, although he doesn’t explain why the memories are so conveniently recovered in order from the earliest to the most recent.

Grace eventually figures out that he’s on his way to a star that stopped dimming. Great minds decided that the star might reveal an antidote to the astrophage. The odds that he can find the antidote are slim, which explains the novel’s title.

When Grace’s ship arrives in the right neighborhood, he encounters an alien who is on a similar mission. Grace calls the alien Rocky. This happy encounter gives Grace a fresh audience for his science lectures.

The story has a few credibility problems. Grace is a general-purpose scientist who seems to be adept at physics and math but is valued for his knowledge of cellular biology, which allows him to understand the workings of the mitochondria found within the astrophage. Since he wrote his doctoral thesis on a relevant subject, it makes sense that the project manager in charge of saving the Earth would consult him. But the decision to turn a junior high teacher into the manager’s personal science advisor — she even has him testing the glove that will be used to grasp small objects during extra-vehicular activity — seems unlikely. Her decision to draft him as an administrator when he has no particular management experience also struck me as implausible. Weir concocts a reason for turning him into an astronaut that depends on an unlikely coincidence. I’ll cut Weir some slack for all that because Grace is the protagonist and he needs to be immersed in all phases of the project for the story to work. However, science fiction is all about the willingness to suspend disbelief. Weir tested my capacity to do so.

The ease with which Grace and Rocky learn each other’s languages is impossible to believe. Words that signify numbers and computation are easy to translate, as is the periodic table if the two species both understand it. Nouns or verbs that can be demonstrated might be easy to approximate, but it isn’t easy to grasp abstract concepts like “pretty” and “friend” without a common language. Grace and Rocky manage to achieve complete fluency in weeks when linguists would need years.

And then there’s Rocky’s personality. He shares Grace’s sarcastic sense of humor. He shares Grace’s general attitude about most things. Considering that Rocky is an alien, there doesn’t seem to be much about him that’s alien. He’s like a mirror image of Grace, apart from his resemblance to a spider and his need to breathe ammonia.

Setting aside the novel’s flaws, the plot is engaging. Grace has an opportunity to grow by overcoming his cowardice and selfish nature. The ending is much better than I expected it to be. Whittle down the science lectures, keep the meaningful content, and this would be a decent novel. As it stands, Project Hail Mary too often made my eyes glaze over. Young science geeks who feel validated when novels reinforce their belief that “scientists are really smart” might view the book differently.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Loved this! Like The Martian, this is another story about someone figuring out how to save the world via science. I don't know if it's better to have an understanding of science or not in order to read this book. I found myself getting mired in the science trying to figure it out before I reminded myself that I wasn't getting graded on whether I could perform the experiments myself - and then started skimming lol. Unlike The Martian, this isn't one guy figuring out everything by himself but instead one guy stranded in space with an unlikely buddy in an alien named Rocky. Ryland Grace wakes up from a coma in a spaceship far from home with two dead crew members. His memory returns in snippets while he tries to figure out how he got there and what he's supposed to be doing. Within days, he finds himself near an alien spaceship. He reaches out to it and thus starts the beginning of a beautiful friendship with an alien creature. All of the science of Rocky's world and the other various worlds that they research together appears sound but I didn't delve into it too much-just loved this buddy comedy and the two characters. There were times that this story made my heart race and kept me up at night-the best kind of mystery.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Ballantine for the ARC in return for my honest review.

I absolutely adored this one! I’ve really enjoyed Weir’s previous books so I didn’t think I would dislike this one. But I wasn’t prepared for how much I loved it. Once I realized the science was above my head and to not try to understand it, I loved this book for how clever it was and how the story unfolded. Just absolutely amazing! I loved the back and forth in past and present as you learn right along with the main character about what happened. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC of this one!!

I received a copy of this story from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm torn by this book. The plot was an enjoyable thought-experiment but wasn't altogether surprising. So many chapters ended with a "cliffhanger" moment that it became repetitive and annoying. The science and math aspects were intriguing, even if they sometimes went over my head. Time dilation is a fascinating concept I wasn't really aware of before reading this.

The nonlinear narration made absolute sense since Ryland Grace wakes up and has amnesia. It was cool seeing how he wound up as the sole survivor of the Hail Mary. But I didn't find Ryland terribly interesting as the narrator. Because the story is so heavily weighted towards the goal of saving Earth, there isn't a lot of room for an emotional connection. We don't get to see him interact with other people enough.

I finished it because I wanted it to end a certain way and I had to see if it would, not because I cared about the characters.

My biggest issue with the book is something I don't feel comfortable mentioning because it contains massive spoilers. But after that moment, it basically put me off.

I don't know that I'd recommend this because I've enjoyed other Andy Weir books better but it would depend on the person.

Mark Watney, the hero of Andy Weir’s first novel, The Martian, famously said that the only way he could save himself from being marooned on Mars was too, “science the shit out of the problem.” The Martian, a vastly entertaining novel, was in many ways a throwback to classic, golden age science fiction, when SF was often written by actual scientists, and the heroes wore lab coats. Weir never glossed over the science Watney used—he showed his work, in detail, without it ever being boring. He made the science exciting.

Mark Watney has nothing on Ryland Grace, the hero of Weir’s new novel, Project Hail Mary.

Grace wakes up on a spaceship next to two long-dead crew mates, his only companions the robotic arms that have been caring for him. He doesn’t know who he is, doesn’t even know his own name, but he does know science. As he explores the ship, his memories begin to slowly trickle in as flashbacks that show him, and the reader, how he got to where he is—on a desperate, hail mary mission to save humanity, to save the planet Earth itself.

Weir intercuts between what’s happening on the ship and the flashback scenes, until the two eventually come together. Even more than with The Martian, Project Hail Mary is packed wall to wall with science and math, but if that sounds boring to you, then you don’t know Weir. This novel is a rollicking thrill ride, and the science only adds to the excitement. It never feels as if Weir is showing off. Everything is integral to the plot and moves the story forward at a propulsive rate.

Okay, here’s the thing. What I’ve described to you so far is basically the first third of the novel, because at about that point Weir throws us a planet-sized curveball. Project Hail Mary becomes a very different, and even better, story. Nope, I’m not going to give it away—that would be a disservice to you as a reader. Suffice to say that while the path it takes is surely unexpected, the novel becomes deeper, more meaningful. Weir hits surprisingly emotional notes, and nice touches of humor as well, while still ratcheting up the tension. He’s a natural storyteller.

Project Hail Mary was released on May 4th, and this is one you should not miss. Much like The Martian, it’s going to make a helluva movie.

I haven’t had many 5-star reads this year, but Andy Weir’s newest is absolutely that!
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This science fiction book follows main character Ryland Grace as he’s tasked with essentially saving humanity. The science in this one is heavy, but I found it so thrilling to read about!! Weir’s writing is absolutely incredible and the characters he shares with us are nothing short of amazing. Read the synopsis below and then pick up a copy!! I don’t want to give too much away, but I’m telling you, I 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝 it!!⁣

Holy Moly this book was amazing!!! I absolutely loved The Martian and was doubtful anything by Weir would ever live up to it. Project Hail Mary definitely exceeded those expectations. I have never wanted a book NOT to end. Weir's humorous writing style and complex characters immediately draw you into the story. Like The Martian, there is lots of scientific jargon and explanations, bu for the most part, it is understandable for anyone. However, I did find myself skimming some of it towards the end because of the suspense of the story. This book made me laugh and cry and shout for joy. I am not usually a Sci-Fi book reader but Weir has a way of making it more than that. There are complex relationships, drama, and comedy that make this book so much more than Sci-Fi. I HIGHLY recommend this book.

Andy Weir (The Martian) is back with another outstanding sci-fi novel. Earth is in peril from a sun-eating algae. A brilliant but unmotivated science teacher finds himself in the middle of the effort to save the earth. When he wakes up in space, not remembering how he got there, he finds that he is Earth's last hope.
What Weir does better than anyone is make complicated science stuff understandable to the average reader (me, the science dummy). He uses humor to explain and the stakes for his characters are so high that you can't help but root for the underdog. His villains are brilliant because they are the impossible situations that his characters are put into.
This book is part unlikely astronaut story, part buddy cop comedy (spoiler alert: his new best friend is an alien), and part end of days science fiction. I received and tried to read this book first but then switched to the audiobook version. If you are like me and have trouble digesting and staying invested in detailed science talk, do the audio version. The narrator really helps make it more understandable and does a perfect job with the wit and humor. It also helps to have the audio version for the alien's musical dialog.
This book would be great for the sci fi and non sci fi enthusiast. Listen to the audio version.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advance readers copy.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! No spoilers. Beyond amazing I enjoyed this book so very much. The characters and storyline were fantastic. The ending I did not see coming Could not put down nor did I want to. Truly Amazing and appreciated the whole story. This is going to be a must read for many many readers. Maybe even a book club pick.

Andy Weir writes the perfect mix of science and thriller! He has returned to the same quality of writing as The Martian and I cannot wait to recommend this to fans of the smart thriller!

Project Hail Mary was another wonderful read from Andy Weir. The Martian captivated me so much I have reread and relistened to it several times. Artemis was also a good read and listen. Project Hail Mary is still four stars but differs in my mind in one important category. With The Martian and Artemis, it was easy for me to "see" the settings. I have watched enough NASA TV over the years to have a good feeling for the planet and moon. It makes the science of the book easier to imagine. The majority of Project Hail Mary takes place in deep space. Despite the many Hubble and other telescope photographs, I cannot begin to imagine the vastness of space. This may be a failing of my imagination or the fact that I did not begin to read science fiction until I was an adult. My lack of imagination made the science involved not concrete enough to have it make sense without pulling me out of the story. But Project Hail Mary is so much more than science. The main characters were, as usual, well written. I liked them and wanted to see their success. I did enjoy the story enough to check out the audiobook. The audiobook performed by Ray Porter is terrific. The audiobook made the story flow easier for me than reading it. I think is because Ray Porter's narration is magnificent and allows me to stay in the story despite my issues with the book.
I received an advance copy of Project Hail Mary from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I purchased the Audible edition.

Only Andy Weir could tell this story and make science and so interesting to a liberal arts mind like mine. I've loved Weir's stories since The Martian and Artemis and was so excited to be granted a copy of this book. Ryland is such a great character, especially considering he doesn't know who or where he is when we meet him. I love the problem solving skills in Weir's books and the attention to detail within his stories set in the harshest places we could imagine.

If you've read Weir before you know what to expect but you have no idea what's coming.

Synopsis: 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, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?