Project Hail Mary

Woah! It's been a very long time since I read sci-fi, and this story kidnapped me along on a whirlwind of a space adventure! I couldn't put the book down as I needed to know what happened next at all times. The constant element of mystery, with a few action sequences sprinkled in, really achieve the amazing tension that kept me being pulled into the story stronger than gravity (heh). As any good fictional story does, Project Hail Mary draws some pretty compelling parallels to our own reality. Although the comparisons it draws are unambiguous, the thoughts it inspired in me were not. I mean, there aren't really clear villains in this story for me, and that's why it was sometimes difficult to decide whose side I was on. We are pretty used to having heroes and villains in our stories, after all.

The reason I only gave four stars is that despite the exciting storyline, unfortunately Andy Weir's stylistic writing choices did not do it for me the same way. Right from the get-go, the main character's inner dialogue was... grating. I don't like it when too many spoken language ornaments are used in writing, as (to me) it simply makes the writing itself stand out way more than the story or the character's personality. Breaks the fourth wall, if you will. The other issue comes with the 'show, don't tell' rule. There was far too much telling going on!!! I get that for dramatics it can be effective to end a chapter with "Thing X happened. Uh oh. That means bad thing XYZ", but not every few paragraphs, please! I should be able to discern the character's emotions and the implications of things directly from how they're written, without explicit explanations every single time.