Project Hail Mary

If I could give this book 6 stars, or even more, I would.

I am not a scifi person, let me start there. I've rarely read scifi, and certainly not this type. Project Hail Mary kept coming up on my social media as a high rated book and eventually one has to give in to that kind of pressure with nearly no negative points. Fast forward to me reading the first chapter and then not stopping until I was done. I cried multiple times, I laughed so hard. This book is an incredible hopeful, beautiful look at humanity, life, and what lengths we'll go to in order to save ourselves and those we love. I don't know if any book this year will top this one, but I know I will be thinking about Grace (and Rocky) for months to come. 

“In matters of survival, our distinctions are irrelevant. We're all astronauts.”

5/5

Absolutely loved this book,not my usual genre.Got The Martian to read one day too.

This was amazing.

This is an amazing book to teach you astrophysics and science in general. However, it's a mediocre story with shallow characters and naive story.

Andy Weir conseguiu se superar e entregou uma obra fascinante, que, em minha opinião, é melhor do que “Perdido em Marte” Um livro que é um verdadeiro pageturner. A Terra está ameaçada por uma bactéria devoradora de estrelas que colocou nosso Sol na mira e pode acabar com toda a humanidade. Uma missão é organizada para estudar e resolver o problema e a história que se segue é impressionante.

Everybody's favourite science teacher wakes up in a galaxy far gar away and sets about saving humanity with the help of a singing spiderthingy

3.5 rounded up for Christmas.

First off I thought this was infinitely better than The Martian. I laughed a lot, not sure if I was supposed to, but this is a comedy right? Grace was an interesting character, at first I thought his “jovial” nature would annoy the hell out of me but as the story progresses it actually works really well. The story itself is pants on fire ridiculous but strangely compelling and the bizarre ending? Well I quite liked that too I think that sums this books up quite nicely, I quite liked it.

It's an absolute shame that this book came out after Artemis because I feel like that book drove a lot of Weir's fans away. He excels at writing one, mid-tier intelligence, white-bread-interesting type guy getting stuck in space, and he returned to that for Project Hail Mary and nailed it. He keeps the hard science fiction in his writing but makes it approachable for any audience with at least a high-school understanding of how space works. Project Hail Mary is a page-turner and very satisfying to read.

(3.5 - book. 4.5 as audiobook)

Could probably be enjoyed by middle school readers. Marvel quips and reddit 'le epic science' is 90% of this book.

DNF 233.
I don't know if I'm in a reading slump or the books I'm reading just aren't for me. I liked this book in the beginning because of the sarcastic prose but it started to get too childish for me. I like a bit more grit and poignancy to my books.

The scale of this book is very epic but it never felt like it. There is an alien “algae” that feeds on stars, so our Sun is dying which means we die. Ryland is sent to space to find an answer to save humanity and finds the help of another life form who's going through the exact same thing in a different galaxy. That sounds terrible but Weir's light hearted prose continuously brings the significance of the situation down to where I'm not that worried about anything. The movie Don't Look Up with Leonardo DiCaprio is a perfect representation of this book. The world is coming to an end and everyone is chill about it.

I can see why people love this book for the reasons I hate and maybe the ending is super momentous but I just don't care anymore. Moving on.

If you loved The Martian, Project Hail Mary will not disappoint. Devoured it in just over a day. Same ebb and flow of life-threatening problems being scienced the shit out of.

I did have a few annoyances: 1) I had to suppress my frustration with the abundance of unexamined misogyny in the author. (Does the woman who has CERN bending to her will really need you to explain cosmic rays to her???) 2) I could have done without soooo much mental math being explained to me. 3) all the engineering was just deux ex machina-ed by one particular compound, but the engineer is such a delight that this is minor quibbling. No question at all who the real hero is. ;) 4) Last grumble – I thought the gravity on Erid was 29g....

All that said, it is an awesome, happy, hopeful read.

It would have been 4 stars if not for all the (multiple!) vodka stereotypes. For some reason they got under my skin and my resentment grew stronger with each mention. A genius Russian engineer and all we get to remember her by is that she wanted to die of heroin overdose and basically never went anywhere without ‘very strong' vodka. So furious!!! Want to splash a glass of said vodka in the author's face. Portraying Ilyukhina like that was absolutely uncalled for.

Pretty much exactly what I'm looking for in a modern science fiction epic. The writing style is a bittersweet treat because it's approachable to all but causes the story to be over far too soon and leaves me wanting to come back.

Гораздо хуже «Марсианина», но лучше «Артемиды». В целом, сложно воспринимать после «Проблемы трех тел» такой херовый сай-фай.

Основная проблема этой книги - дебильная, поучающая манера повествования. Автор вроде как читателям объясняет действия ГГ, а вроде как и диалог между персонажами ведет. Но это вряд ли подходит для художественной литературы, скорее для учебника в развлекательной форме. Галопом по Европам нам пытаются и за направленную эволюцию пояснить и за теорию относительности. При этом сам автор знает по верхам, поэтому уровень информации скорее википедийный.

Вторая проблема - вечный туз в рукаве в виде технически подкованного напарника ГГ, способного решить любую возникающую проблему на корабле. Это как в игры с чит-кодами играть. Да и в целом у очередного «Уотни» все складно получается. Физическую подготовку он толком не проходил, но способен в «Орлане» по 6 часов ВКД фигачить. Инопланетный язык он учит моментально. Будучи специалистом в довольно узкой теме, он внезапно оказывается и чудо-инженером и специалистом по корректировке орбиты и прочее прочее.

2.25

This, sadly, did not live up to my expectations.
I LOVED The Martian and expected to feel the same way about this book. Unfortunately, I did not like the main character as much. He'a still a good guy, but some of the remarks he kept making about him being American and not using the metric system sometimes and him being ‘not like other teachers' was pretty annoying. (This is coming from a teacher.)
Halfway through the book Weir also repeated himself quite a lot. The book was just a bit too long.

Negative things aside, the book was still a lot of fun to read and once again a unique concept. I am Rocky's number one fan. I would do anything for that weird, little creature. It also reads very easily, even if you know nothing about science, like me.

It doesn't feel right to give this book anything less than 4 stars, so, even though I had my irritations and this this book could be edited a bit more, 4 stars it is

Maybe I will love Artemis more :)

This book was an apocalyptic hug. Favorite read of 2023. I love everything about it. Ryland Grace is a joy to tag along with, even as he's facing certain death in a separate solar system from Earth. His inner dialogue is so entertaining. Rock stole my heart even though I'm terrified of spiders.It was so heartwarming to watch these two work together across culture and language to communicate and solve the mystery of astrophages to solve both of their planets. The solid and steady growth of their friendship was lovely and the world-building was so well done. I appreciated how flashbacks were introduced as a form of Grace slowly getting his memory back, so it didn't feel forced in the overall plot.

Grumpy. Angry. Stupid. How long since last sleep, question?

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.

Meh. wouldn't read it again. Too much simplification of actual science with the addition of useless, unnecessary math to try to seem smart. No way a high school science teacher knows math. Unrealistic. Not a fan of the ending or the MC commentary. 3 stars is generous. probably a 2.5.

4 stars just for the creativity. I was thoroughly impressed with how much the author thought things through. I didn't have as bad of an experience as with the Martian. This book has jargon, but at least it didn't make me want to punch something.

I still don't think the author is great at dialogue. It never felt believable. I enjoyed the buddy comedy aspect of it.

Not my normal genre but I enjoyed it! A lot of the science stuff went over my head but the story was great. It was good that you kearn how Ryland ends up on the Hail Mary. So you read the earth story and then it goes to the Hail Mary story and then back and forth. Happy ending was the main thing!

Lots of fun to read with loads of good twists and surprises.

It is a bit like a Heinlein book with the notions of optimism/sacrifice and the friendly, first-person narration. It isn't as weird as Heinlein could get.

Almost makes me wish I'd been better at math/science!

Lo ame de principio a fin, es simplemente hermoso, intrigante, emocionante, esperanzador, me hizo sentir de todo, me hizo amar a sus personajes (a uno especialmente mas que al otro). Me hizo llorar un montón de lo emotivo y bonito de los capítulos finales. Un libro que estoy dispuesta a leer muchas veces mas. Para mi merece 6 estrellas.

Great book. The ending hit me harder than I expected.