REVIEW: PROJECT HAIL MARY
A Hail Mary of galactic proportions...
PROJECT HAIL MARY is something of a spiritual follow up to Weir's breakout novel, THE MARTIAN, which I quite liked though I thought it had some flaws. I've been meaning to get to some of his other work for a while now, but after hearing so many nice things about the audio edition for this one, I decided to make space for it in my listening lineup.
HOW I RATED IT
5/5 Andy Weir has not only managed to strike gold once again, but also somehow topped his breakout success with THE MARTIAN.
CHARACTERS
Ryland Grace serves as the main protagonist of this science fiction odyssey. Similar to Mark Watney from Weir's breakout book, Ryland is extremely intelligent, vaguely irritating, and occasionally reckless, but always quick on his feet. The story is told from his first person perspective and he's someone who really only gets more interesting over time. Initially, he suffers from a case of weirdly selective amnesia, but his identity and past slowly returns to him as he investigates a spaceship that he wakes up on. He has the misfortune of learning quite early on that he is the sole surviving member of a crew of three and has to piece together what exactly it is that their mission is supposed to be. The way his character evolves over the course of the novel is quite captivating and seeing how he handles various situations of absurd complexity and fairly high stakes always felt satisfying. Even though Ryland is a worthy hero for this story, things probably would have gotten a little boring if he remained completely isolated in his confined space throughout the entirety of the narrative. Thankfully, we get plenty of interactions between him and other characters through flashback sequences. The side characters in these past moments all felt incredibly unique and memorable. I also feel like I have to talk about Ryland's costar in the present day. Even though it's sort of a spoiler to discuss this, I have to say that "Rocky" was such a brilliantly handled character. Rocky is an actual alien from another world who finds himself making a connection with Ryland. The reason I think this is worth spoiling is that it needs to be stated that the way in which Weir handles this aspect of the story felt every bit as grounded in hard science as the rest of his work is. While there is certainly a fictional element here as well, everything is explained and depicted in a way that feels completely plausible. It helps that Rocky can also be rather funny and the way that his lines are handled in Audio (since he doesn't technically speak English) was absolutely brilliant. Mark, from THE MARTIAN remains almost entirely solitary for the duration of that book, so I was very pleased to see that Weir can write such fabulous character interactions and that this wasn't just a repeat of his prior book with a new character and setting.
PLOT/TONE
The plot of the story is something that is unveiled slowly over time. As Ryland experiences flashes from his past, the true nature of who he is, what his mission is all about, and why he is out in space, lightyears away from Earth all starts to come together. As one might extrapolate from the title, his mission is one of dire importance. Very early on we learn that the entire planet is at risk of being destroyed thanks to a sort of cosmic algae that has drifted into Earth's solar system and proceeded to feed off of The Sun. It's a wild sort of setup, but in typical Weir fashion, the science behind what is happening and why is explained in full depth. The way this was handled felt a lot more graceful than the way that I remember science factoring into THE MARTIAN. In that book, the exact scientific theory behind what threatened Mark would sometimes slow down the action down to a standstill and made the narrative flow feel clunky. In PROJECT HAIL MARY, the fictional science is explained in a far more organic way. Sometimes piecing it together is how Ryland manages to save himself and other times discoveries aren't fully made until after the danger has passed. The way his work in the flashbacks plays out felt similarly smooth. In general, I think Weir has just really mastered his own formula of delivering on a science fiction story that is deeply grounded in science that is partly true and partly theoretical. The overall pacing between the events in the present and those of the past also made for an experience that kept me hungry to see what would happen in both the timelines. One might think that the flashbacks wouldn't be as interesting since we ultimately know where Ryland will end up, but I actually found that knowledge made those moments even more compelling to pour through. This might be partly because of the speculative nature of how the world might react to such a large and somewhat intangible threat, but I think the other part was just my curiosity as to how he ended up in space in the first place, since he's not an astronaut by profession like Mark was. While I do feel as though the ending neglected to follow up on the socio-political concepts it introduced in the way I was hoping, I actually liked where Weir took the story's final chapters even more than what I'd hoped to get from them.
SETTING/WORLD
As one might expect with a space-faring story, much of the novel is confined to The Hail Mary, which is the name of Ryland's vessel as well as the codename for his mission. It's a state of the art spacecraft with lots of interesting tech on board. What I think was most fascinating about it is that it felt somewhat feasible that we could build such a ship since it's filled with flawed, somewhat unintelligent tech as opposed to some sort of borderline-magical starship run by an intricate AI or something. The flashbacks to Earth help provide a little variety in the scenery, especially since Ryland's memories take him pretty much across the world. Even in the present though, there is this interesting juxtaposition between Ryland's tight quarters and the vast expanse of the universe. He's charting new "ground" for humanity and unlocking the secrets of the catastrophic life form that is threatenning the entire planet. Though he doesn't touch down upon the alien world that this space algae originates from, we do get to "explore" it a bit from it's orbit and atmosphere. Thanks to Rocky, there is also an entire alien life form, culture, and physiology to learn about. This constant process of discovery kept things feeling expansive and fresh despite the close quarters. While I was very much impressed by what Weir was able to do in his previous book, I am even more impressed with how much fun this new take on outer space is. As I mentioned before, I also thought the way he imagines the world politics of such a doomsday event to be a pleasure to navigate. Though firmly grounded in science and scientific theory, there's an undeniable sense of wonder that Weir still manages to convey and I am very curious to see what else he can do within his unique brand of science fiction.
AUDIO
I'd heard some wonderful things about this audiobook, but upon listening to the sample, I wasn't super impressed. I think this is mostly just because I found Ray Porter (the narrator) to be a little annoying. After giving this a proper chance, I stand by my initial opinion, but I soon realized that this was actually quite appropriate for Ryland's character because Weir's characters tend to be ever-so-slightly annoying. I suppose the proper term for it is "quirky," but the nerdy sort of arrogance that Weir's characters tend to have can be just as funny, endearing, and grating as traits that someone's oddball friend might have. To Porter's credit, I don't think he ever overdoes it, but his inflection very clearly articulates the type of person Ryland is and I liked that he could deliver a performance that gave me such a clear picture of this flawed, but ultimately good-natured character. I was also impressed by the amount of raw emotion that he gives to Ryland during some of the heavier moments, but where the audio production really blew me away was with how Rocky is "voiced." I don't want to give away any details, but the way this is handled was pure genius and it's kind of hard to imagine consuming the story in any other format after listening to this. Other human characters are also expertly voiced with a couple of small exceptions. There are two different characters from East Asia whose accents just do not sound correct at all. I can see how it would be a challenging affect to mimic, but I sort of felt like the audio direction and the writing of the book itself was trying so hard to not be offensively stereotypical that it ended up swinging entirely the other way and delivering something unrecognizable. These are rare instances in what is otherwise an extremely impressive delivery filled with a wide range of accents from around the world.
CONCLUSION
I'm so glad that I finally got around to giving this a listen. Near-perfect audio production, a well-paced narrative, fascinating characters, and cool explanations for everything made this a story that is truly something special.
(+) Superb listening experience
(+) Ryland serves as a fantastic, yet flawed, main character
(+) The way that hard science fits into the story felt quite natural
(+) The dual-narrative between the past and present made for an enticing narrative format
(+) Ryland's interactions with other characters in both the past and present were deeply engaging
(+) The ending really brought it all home for me
(-) There are a couple small annoyances/blemishes that I had with brief moments in the narration
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