Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

 

Summary (from the publisher): 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 a computer and 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, The Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian--while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.

Review: Imagine waking up with no memory and slowly coming to realize that you're in space and have been traveling away from earth for years. This is the reality into which Dr. Ryland Grace groggily comes to consciousness. Alone in a hospital bed, he has been kept alive in a medically induced coma for the journey, a coma his two crewmates have not survived. Over time, he remembers that the world was under threat and his mission was a hail mary bid to find a solution to the extinction-level threat that is endangering the human species. 

This was absolutely spellbinding speculative/science fiction. The tension and anxiety I felt reading this, as Grace struggles to conquer this monumental task before him - save the human species - while also trying to survive, was high. Personally, thinking about space, let alone going into space, makes me feel queasy at best, so reading this was a true labor of love. The sheer scale of the gravity of his task - save planet earth - up against the precarious metal hull of his ship, with just his wits and his scientific training to aid him, was absolutely terrifying for me to read. 

This book does require some serious suspension of disbelief because - mild spoiler - Grace makes a friend in space and one that is not human!! Truly, this relationship became the crowning glory of this book - an unlikely but utterly endearing friendship between two truly good souls just doing their best to save their respective series. 

I do wish Dr. Grace had had more back story. We know he gave up on a scientific research career to become a teacher. But we know almost nothing else about his personal life. Absolutely no personal relationships are described. No parents, no siblings, no friends. One time he references an ex-girlfriend, but otherwise he has no past in many ways. His primary earth relationship is with the controversial Stratt, who is heading up the earth team to plan for this upcoming catastrophe. Of course, part of this absence could be his faulty memory upon waking up from a coma on ship; maybe his past will continue to come back to him. But this absence of other connections with others were yet another reason why his friendship with Rocky was so vital to humanize this story. Through Rocky, we get a sense of the type of person and friend Grace is. 

A truly unique read that kept me on my toes. I had two possible endings in mind for this book the whole time I was reading and neither of those turned out to be how it actually ended. I cannot wait to see the movie coming out next year because the whole time I was reading, I kept thinking how brilliant this story would be on screen. 

Stars: 4.5