Started on 5.2.25, finished on 5.8.25

I picked up Project Hail Mary to continue my quest of reading more science fiction and because there’s a movie version coming out next year that I will undoubtedly want to see because Ryan Gosling is starring.

I really liked it overall, but with one huge caveat—I found a lot of the writing distractingly annoying and cringe. I would have to read another book by the author to see if that’s just his writing style or if it was specific to the internal monologue of the character he created, but it was really hard to ignore and I actually considered not finishing the book because of it. The plot got more interesting around the time that I was about to put it down, so that carried me through.

I saw a post on Reddit describing the writing style as “juvenile and painfully unfunny,” and I have to agree. I could have saved about a hundred examples, but here is one that I think makes my point fairly well: “Once again I’m struck by melancholy. I want to spend the rest of my life studying Eridian biology! But I have to save humanity first. Stupid humanity. Getting in the way of my hobbies.”

Sometimes when I was really struggling with how cringe it was, I pictured Ryan Gosling delivering the lines and it helped.

All that said, Rocky 100% made the book worth reading for me. The way he’s characterized and the way they communicate and problem-solve together worked so well, and I have to assume that’s a big part of what has made this book so popular. It’s really a lovely story and I got so emotionally invested that at the point when Rocky is injured and we’re not sure whether or not he survived the accident, I closed the book and had to take a minute before continuing. I can’t wait to see how the movie turns out, and I guess I’ll need to read The Martian, too.

Click here to buy this book on Bookshop.org

My favorite quotes:

“The situation was dire and deadly, but it was also the norm. Londoners during the Blitz in World War II went about their day as normal, with the understanding that occasionally buildings get blown up. However desperate things were, someone still had to deliver milk.”

“Human beings have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal.”

“…yeah. It’s the same guy. If you looked at a rock for several hours, and someone replaced it with a very similar, but slightly different rock, you would know.”

“We have an unspoken agreement that cultural things just have to be accepted. It ends any minor dispute.”