Micro Review 21

 

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (Cornerstone)

electronic proof

I was surprised to realise that it it was three years since I read and reviewed Weir's last book Artemis. Time is doing that funny thing again as I'm sure it was far more recent!

Project Hail Mary is a book about so many things, but at its heart it is a buddy movie about saving the world.

It is another book that I am loathe to say too much about apart from quoting the blurb that the publishers have released:

A lone astronaut.
An impossible mission.
An ally he never imagined.

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?

 The plot is a little far fetched, but like all of Weir's books the science is accurate - and if it does all start to go over your head then you can skim those paragraphs without losing any huge details of the plot!

I really fell in love with this book, and right up until the last page I was kept guessing as to how it was going to end.

This is a great sci-fi read, and I think that it will make a great film - just as The Martian did.