Gen

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Gen is Currently Reading

Gen is currently reading

The Strength of the Few (Hierarchy, #2)

by James Islington (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

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May 01, 2026 10:38AM

Gen is currently reading

Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: library-loaned, read-2023, favorites, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in April 2023

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Gen said: " “War, famine, pestilence, and death. Astrophage is literally the apocalypse. The Hail Mary is all we have now. I’ll make any sacrifice to give it even the tiniest additional chance of success... You three are going to Tau Ceti. The rest of us are goi “War, famine, pestilence, and death. Astrophage is literally the apocalypse. The Hail Mary is all we have now. I’ll make any sacrifice to give it even the tiniest additional chance of success... You three are going to Tau Ceti. The rest of us are going to hell. More accurately, hell is coming to us.”

4.5 ⭐'s

Phew, my mind is boggled, usually I just finish one book and jump right into the next but I needed a good days break after reading Project Hail Mary because I felt like I had just crammed for a science exam. This book is fantastic and confusing and unbelievable, and really asks you to suspend your disbelief because wow - things get pretty crazy. I don't want to go into too much depth with this review because I think you really need to read this to let the plot unfold without any spoilers but also I do want to warn fellow readers that this book might not be for everyone.

Ryland Grace is a biologist, specifically interested in astrobiology, who left the industry in a blaze of rage many years prior and decided to become a school teacher instead. One of his papers that played a role in him leaving the industry hypothesized that the Goldilocks Zone in space, where life can be habitable in a solar system, wasn't as specific as theorized and that there is a possibility that life could exist without the need for water. So when a new life form is detected in a connecting arc between the sun and Venus, Grace is asked to be the first scientist to study the findings. What follows is the craziest jaunt across multiple solar systems in a race to save Earth from the lowering temperatures caused by the loss of energy to the sun and to find a way to defeat the Astrophage, which is threatening them all with an apocalyptic ice age!

This book focuses HEAVILY on the science side of sci-fi - at times I felt like I was reading directly from a textbook which got extremely exhausting at points. Thankfully Andy Weir seems to have a magical touch where he crams a lot of scientific knowledge into a book but somehow you still manage to follow along and understand most of it, which makes it really accessible to a wide range of people. But I think it may have been a little too heavy handed on the science, perhaps it's just my scientifically challenged brain complaining but at times I think the amount of explanation was really unnecessary and it bogged down the story a bit too much. There was an incredible amount of tell and very little show which can be difficult in a story like this but just when the action would start picking up Grace would launch into an in-depth description and I would slowly start to lose focus.

I really liked the way this read as if we were in Grace's mind, like he was talking to himself and we were hearing his thoughts. The way the book begins with us/him waking from a coma in a spaceship with amnesia trying to figure out what the heck is going on really hooked me into the story right from the beginning, we learn things as Grace does as he regains his memories through flashbacks. Unfortunately, I didn't really love the segues into the flashbacks, it was written like he was having the flashback midway through a sentence and sometimes this worked, but a lot of the time it just felt awkward. In the flashbacks is where we meet most of our others characters as well and this was absolutely fascinating. I did find the side characters pretty dry and stereotypical but I don't think that really detracted from the story.

Overall, this is an incredible book, I can absolutely understand why some people might not like it and why others are absolutely raving about it. If you've read The Martian or seen the movie with Matt Damon, or Interstellar with Matthew McConaughey, then I think you'll appreciate this book. It has a lot of the same themes, same characteristic styles etc as them and the ending really does wrench at the heart strings in a similar way. I think everyone should at least try to read this book, it is definitely worth most of the hype in my opinion 😊 ...more "

progress:

(4%)
— Apr 18, 2026 09:29AM

Apr 13, 2026 01:47PM · see review

Gen’s Notes & Highlights

If It Makes You Happy by Julie Olivia

3 highlights

sometimes, life doesn’t always go the way you want, and it’s never ideal to abandon your previous life to pursue a new one. But sometimes, if you don’t, life isn’t a life anymore.