The Book I Read In Three Days: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

 

I don't usually read books quickly. For one thing, I read multiple books simultaneously, and I make progress in quite a few of them every day (currently 9). And I don't really have a lot of time to devote to reading in a day, so all of that reading usually occurs in 10 + 40 + 10 + 15 = 1 hour and 15 minutes. So it's unusual for me to really bear down on a book and polish it off in three days.

But Andy Weir is special. I've read The Martian, Artemis, "Randomize" and Cheshire Crossing, and I am hoping to read every other thing he publishes (at least in terms of book form) until he stops writing. So when I was wandering through Half-Price Books a few weeks ago and saw a new Andy Weir novel--Project Hail Mary--it was hard for me not to buy it on the spot. But you know... money and all that. Plus I stopped buying stuff from Amazon just before the year turned, so no help to be had there. So I turned to the Louisville Free Public Library. And...there was a very long wait list. Like 50 people long. Maybe more. I signed up and settled down for the wait. But then one day as I was being OCD and checking in on the book online, I noticed that the catalog said that there was a copy at my branch. Of course--the 7 Day Bestsellers thing! I drove to the library, searched high and low, and...somebody had beaten me to it. 

I was sad that day.

But I kept checking online, and before long another one popped up. So I beat feet to the branch and this time I came home with it. Would I have time to finish it? 7 days, almost 500 pages. Piece of fucking 🎂, man. Though I did have to set Roots aside for a bit.

And?

Well...I really, really like Andy Weir. 

And it's not like this was a bad novel by any means. In fact, I read its 476 pages in three days, so I wouldn't object to categorizing it as a page turner. But it was no The Martian, for sure. In fact, it wasn't even an Artemis. And I think the main culprit was the lead character. What made The Martian such an engaging read (and see) was the character of Mark Watney. I (we?) liked him from the get go. He was smart. He was funny. He was a good guy. Artemis was less good, and I think that was because "Jazz" Bashara was a lesser character than Mark Watney. In fact, though much of that novel has now washed out of my memory cells, I'm sorry to say, one of the things that remains is the feeling that Andy Weir really shouldn't have tried to write from a young female point of view. 

Which brings me to Ryland Grace and Project Hail Mary. The way I see it, there are two things wrong with Mr. Grace: (1) he is a middle school teacher & (2) he is not a good person. I'll leave (2) for you to discover, as I try to avoid spoilers, but I think it's irrefutable. And as for (1), well, I have been a middle school teacher, so it's not that. It's the fact that (a little spoiler, but it comes in very early, so not much of one) Andy doesn't seem to know much about middle school teachers --there are some absolutely ridiculous errors in terms of what Grace does in this capacity--and the fact that we are asked to believe that a middle school science teacher becomes the number one Science Guy in the world as an extinction level event is occurring is just too much. It's such a stupefying level of ridiculousness that it undermines the entire plot of the novel, and I felt the chime of its absurdity at regular intervals as I turned the pages.

And the plot is, as implied earlier, pretty exciting. So it's really a shame to have the drag coefficient of Grace's character pulling down the velocity. And, as with most "errors" in writing, it's completely unnecessary and could have easily been remedied. I have to wonder why Andy Weir's editor didn't step in on this aspect of the book.

But it is an entertaining read, for sure. There are some very nice touches of humor here and there. And even though Andy Weir's tendency to interrupt things to create problems which he can then take pages to analyze and correct can be a bit irritating, it is usually at least a bit interesting, too. 

So I think it's definitely worth reading. But I think that if you go into it with lower expectations you'll be happier than I was. Project Hail Mary is like a sophisticated piece of pulp science fiction. You're not going to get deep characters or blazing insights into the meaning of life. But you are going to turn those pages. Which I think is worth doing.

But next time...I hope Andy gets a new editor.

(I'm available, btw. Just sayin', sir.)