Project Hail Mary

This was a very, very good and fun read. I love this sort of setting (aesthetic??) – the sort of near-future science fiction where everything is pretty grounded in reality (with a few exceptions). I couldn't put the book down! More than that, I wanted to keep picking it up. Big change from things I've been reading lately.

I could see one critique being that it's basically The Martian but Kind of Different, and I suppose that's true. I still enjoyed it!

There are only a couple of things keeping this from 5 stars for me. The biggest is a scene taking place from pages 191 to 194. I'm not sure why the editor let it through. The scene does not involve our protagonist and serves only to show Stratt's authority–something already well-established. Stratt's character and this whole operation sort of push the reader to suspend their disbelief, and that's fair for a fiction book. This scene beggars belief. It is simply nonsense and really took me out of the story. Stratt is kind of an odd character, to begin with (why does an administrator at ESA seem to know so little basic science? Kind of weird), but that's okay. You could lose this scene and lose nothing of value from the book.

I really enjoyed Rocky! I loved the language learning, I liked the description of the species, and the exploration of xenobiology. This was really fun and I was worried for Rocky.