I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed listening to a book as much as I did Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Of course, Weir deserves a lot of credit for writing such a smart book. But I am equally impressed by the performance, the voice acting by Ray Porter. I have rarely listened to an audiobook where I can’t separate the narrator and the central character in the book. Most of the folks read the book, performing the dialogs by characters differently every now and then. That wasn’t the case with Porter — he became the character Ryland Grace. The experience it leaves the listener with is absolutely brilliant. I could ignore many of the faults of the book, the plot because I was completely engrossed by the performance.
Sure, even the book is good. I can’t say the same for the writing. But who cares. There’s an innate charm with the way Weir writes his books. Or the way he structures his plot. There’s a lot of science that’s hard to swallow, at times almost at the verge of being stupid. Yet, it doesn’t come out as lazy to me. And I am not alone to feel so; Brandon Sanderson writes this in his review.
Well, what I love that Andy does is he shows that optimism can be compelling as a narrative. I don’t mind the grimdark movement. I think there’s lots of great books that have come out of it. And I like dystopian science fiction quite a bit. Some of my favorite stories are very depressing dystopian stories, such as Harrison Bergeron. But there is a certain electric-fun to optimism. And Andy Weir writes optimistic science fiction, optimistic hard science fiction, even when terrible things are happening.
I don’t think I can word the way I feel about Weir’s writing any better. He did that successfully with Martian. And he outdoes himself by being even more audacious with Project Hail Mary.
The book gets four star from me. And an added star just for Roy. No surprise, it’s rated (almost) five star on Audible. Absolutely brilliant!
Finished reading: Project Hail Mary: A Novel by Andy Weir 📚
