Project Hail Mary, book #2

 

SOME SPOILERS INCLUDED!

My initial review of this book was going to be:

Dumbest book I ever read.  The end.

But then I sat with it a while.  I chewed on it.  I discussed with some people.  And I slightly changed my mind.  

While I was ready for some meat in a book after all the fluff I read over Christmas, this was like going from marshmallows to burnt steak.  There is a lot of sciency words that the author seems to think I understand.  There was no romance, no whodunit mystery, nothing,  Just some guy stuck in space and at first he had no idea who he was or what he was doing or where he even was.  Not exactly something that grabs my attention.  

Time goes by.  I keep reading.  I get encouragement from Rebecca who suggests skipping over the sciency part.  More pages go by.  I get about 60% done and I am literally ready to quit.  And I am not a book quitter.  I will read to the end to see what hope lives for the characters, but I was getting close to chukking it.  

But I kept reading.  And one night I find myself up for 3 hours reading.  I find myself saying, "Just go with the absurdity."  Then all of a sudden I have one or two chapters left.  And I'm still not sure how it will end.  I'm still not really  enjoying it, but I'm intriqued how it will end.  I'm also afraid its going to be a generic ending like:

As he saw Earth in the distance, knowing he made it.  That he was still alive, that he had the answer to fix all the problems; he realized how lucky he was.  The end.   

If that was how it ended I informed Katie and Roger that I would throw the book across the room, pick it up, take it outside, rub it in the mud, rip it in 1000 pieces and put it down the disposal.  

But surprise, surprise.  That is not how the book ended.  In fact, in my "just go with it" attitude I almost like the ending.  It's still pretty unbelievable, but I guess considering the options it was pretty good.  

I would not consider this science fiction as such, because to me SciFi is like Star Trek or Star Wars, where aliens talk in English ;)  That is way more believable to me.  

If you consider this more a book about friendship than saving humanity and other living beings, then maybe I might put it on my "It Wasn't So Bad" list.   

My big pet peeve in the whole book that made it the most unbelievable was the fact that Rocky had no eyes and all his information gathering was done solely with sonar, his ears as such.  I cannot in any stretch of my imagination believe one's hearing could be so good that you can comprehend a whole solar system and the mass, air quality, etc of planets gagillions miles away.  

All in all, read at your risk.  I"ll be curious to know how the others in Book Club felt about it.  

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?  (picture and description from Amazon)

I'm very excited about my next book reading project!

:)

Melissa