Tom’s Reviews > Project Hail Mary > Status Update

"As always everything worked flawlessly."

And Stratt is just a terrible character. Zero resolution. Just a "bad ass girl boss".

I'm not even bothering to comprehend the science stuff. Each problem gets an automatic solution and all I need to know is that we are now on Plotpoint B from Plotpoint A.

Okay. First these poorly-designed flashbacks had some sort of in-story reason for the pacing, as it was literally Ryland having a mental flashback and his conscious sort of pauses and resumes as he absorbs the information.

Now. They are incredibly boring but now also, despite there being reveals, Ryland just doesn't react and neither does Rocky. Are these boring segments just for us now?

Basically halfway through this book and there is absolutely no point to this book. The flashbacks scenes are a painful snore-fest with obnoxious characters. And the prose is still awful.

Now that the plot has progressed to a decent percentage, I have to say that I expected *too much* plot-wise because that was really the only thing left keeping me reading.

The prose is getting a bit less unbearable now.
The dialogue is fine, if a bit juvenile but people do talk like this, especially like Ryland.

I am intrigued and the science explanations are fun to follow, but I am probably never going to be the target demographic of this book - even if I want to laugh at the idea of there being "no politics" in this book.

Each chapter ends with a: "Oh my god- It's actually [blank]!"

PHM seems to take place in an alternate dimension where Elementary Globalism turned out to exist in the real world of geopolitics. It's hard to take seriously but the book was written in 2020...so maybe I can't be *too* harsh as that was probably the last moment when cooperative internationalism existed before dying a brutal death.

Laughing b/c Weir said he dislikes "politics in books" - I see why.

Actual plot set-up is okay, even if Weir is simultaneously trying to absolutely make sure that you remember your high-school physics class but also info-dumping a nonsensical email with the same sort of "science speak".

The prose is terrible. Present tense is fine. The Hunger Games was written in present tense, but it didn't beat you over the head with Reddit tier humour and actually trusted your intelligence.