I brought Project Hail Mary to bring on vacation to a mountain town, knowing I would have plenty of time to sit on the porch and read in the mornings. I expected it to be a fun, easy read that I would breeze through. Instead, it was very much not for me, and I gave up on this one about 40% of the way through.
The narrator was grating and bizarre, the characters were paper-thin stereotypes, and the “plot” seemed to exist mostly so the author could share more high school science facts with the reader. A reviewer on Goodreads summed up my feelings well: “It reads like it’s been aimed with laser precision at the heart of anyone who claims to “fucking love science” and posts on Reddit.”
A sample of the prose we are dealing with here:
I suddenly forgot everything else going on in the room. "Oh God, please tell me you understand where the heat goes. I can't figure out what the heck it's doing with the heat energy!"
"We have figured this out, yes," said Dimitri. "With lasers. It was very illuminating experiment."
"Was that a pun?"
"It was!"
"Good one!"
We both laughed. Stratt glared at us.
Throw in an endless string of science facts that the junior high science teacher/world saving hero can bring up with perfect recall (“I teach junior high school science, these things come up.”), more tiresome stereotypes, and constant cringe-inducing jokes and continue for almost 500 pages.