Stephen Tuck’s Reviews > Project Hail Mary > Status Update

Positives: still easy to read. The story told by flashbacks is capably handled.

Negatives: the Stratt plot device (plus the alien we just met) is a constant source of dei ex machina. Hence, schoolboy quality plotting. Also, zero tension because there’ll be a plot device to rescue the hero at every turn.

I don’t think I’m going to finish this one.

On p. 68 our hero describes the ‘apocalyptic nightmare’ his school pupils will be thrown into. I can’t help but notice it’s much the same nightmare one can find today in (say) west Africa, or Port Moresby, or Sudan.

Apparently something is only REALLY a crisis when prosperous westerners might suffer.

I’m a lifelong Tory; this sort of thing nearly makes me a firebrand Marxist.

Still making up my mind about this. The science is done well and it’s propulsively readable. On the other hand, it asks for a LOT of suspension of disbelief. The idea of the US, Russia and China placing all their resources at the disposal of a Dutch bureaucrat is simply silly, as is the idea of spontaneous global unanimity and every academic biologist in the world giving place to a high school science teacher.