#book.reviews

[bean-bog-blog]

project hail mary: a shitty review of the book + movie

spoiler-free bits are above the cut

verdict:

i loved both a lot!!! BEAUTIFUL book, top 3 of my life, and an amazing movie to boot. i didn't enjoy the movie quite as much as the book (was expected), but it was still a gorgeous lightshow and was well-worth my time. a great take on an excellent story.

rating:

9.35/10 (book)

9.0/10 (movie)

recommendation:

HELL YES!! i think the best way to enjoy to enjoy project hail mary is to read the book, then to watch the movie, as the latter gets quite dicey with some details.

more detailed notes below the cut :)

FINAL SPOILER WARNING

general notes: movie notes:

did not expect how much i'd love the movie aesthetically! -> the score stood out to me almost immediately as exceptionally tasteful; even all of the lyrical/pop culture songs in there were beautifully selected. i'm currently listening to the score right now as i write this review. i love the instrumentation they chose for the score, it's so playful and industrial, but still has the capability to fit the more dramatic scenes. it's very fitting, is what i'm saying X) my favorite scores are time go fishing (obviously), life is reason, centrifuge, erratic maneuver detected, and rocky moves in. -> the sound design is a hallmark of how far we've come with space movies when compared to something older, like the star wars movie (not to throw shade on the franchise at all, of course). i love the use of the special sort of vacuum silence with only occasional subtle vibration when the camera "grazes" something during the outer space scenes. AUGH. props to daniel pemberton and the sound team!! -> the lighting and camerawork were simply gorgeous... really made me Feel the vacuum and motion at times, it was so amazing to see even though i couldn't see it in theaters. widescreen monitor and good headphones were enough to reduce me to tears during the adrian fishing scene. -> the set and prop design is excellent all across the board. the hail mary ship actually looks a lot like what i envisioned while reading the book, so massive props to andy weir for his descriptiveness and props to the set design team hehe. rocky is also quite similar to what i had in mind (mainly from seeing all the fanart while still reading), although i initially thought him to be a bit more "buggy", since words/phrases like "carapace" and "labrador-sized spider" were used to describe him in the book. -> the "realness" of some scenes were beautifully done, like the film logs done by grace, particularly the "personal space" one. it really feels like some dude recording his strange roommate for earth to see X)

about the changes made in the movie compared to the book: -> i actually love what they did with eva stratt's character in the film! made her more 3-dimensional, more sympathetic. she was a little flat in the book but she's so great in the movie!! definitely an elevation, plus sarah müller's performance as her was AMAZING... the "sign of the times" karaoke scene made me emotional and primed me for the absolute obliteration that was time go fishing. -> pretty sure the ", statement" sentence structure is only in the film, right? i don't recall it being in the book, only the ", question?" sentence structure. -> i also think they changed the fact that the blip-A can't attach to the hail mary while the centrifuge is on. pretty minor detail, whatevs. -> Carl Exists Now. i wish they utilized him more and gave him more depth/screen time, although i understand the hesitance to because he was basically the director(s [?]) exposition OC lmao -> i like that the nannybot is/the mechanical hands are now called armando, and that the ship is called "mary". makes them feel more present in the story rather than background objects like in the book. -> they cut out the whole "attaching the beetles to the ship as makeshift spin-drives" plot point, although i do agree that it would've been difficult to make work for the film and is better relegated to the books. -> PUPPET SHOW!! i actually like this bit. it's funny and cute without being too reductive to the story. also eased the burden of having the exposit all the sciencey stuff. -> "fist me" having to be changed to "fist my bump" for the PG-13 movie had me cackling. -> i like the addition of the computer voice to rocky for the majority of the movie. it's a very clever retcon/solution/adaptation; i applaud the filmmakers. the monotone deliver is very very funny at times lmao. it was also a great plot device during the "brave" scene that made me tear up. it reads very much like how rocky reads in the book, and doesn't change the tone by much. rocky probably chose that voice because it's the closest to grace's voice, given it's his only frame of reference for how humans sound.

the little lava ball and it's soft, beanbaggy sound design makes me emotional for some reason. i love it and i want one. i also want a weighted rocky plush and a paperweight in the shape of the hail mary ship. and grace's quilt. and an armando coat hanger. they should just hire me to design merch for the film /silly

i like how they handled the flashbacks, even with the shuffling-around of some of their orders. i enjoyed how they handled exploring grace's cowardice, although i do wish they went more in depth...

i like how ryan gosling establishes grace as a crier consistently throughout the movie despite the technical difficulty of crying scenes. YES. let a human leak from their faces and make gross mucus from emotion. love that.

my issues with the film: -> the setup is nowhere near as strong as that of the book. it takes a while to get going, and it dices up a lot of the sciencey and characterization details that made the book great. they had to create carl as a means to pull grace's internal monologue out of his head and onto the screen, but i feel like they could've utilized him better. the film made me wonder if my friends (who haven't read the book yet) were even fully following the events, since they happened so quickly and without much detail. although i do admit that it was a difficult task without having ryan gosling spit science words at the camera for 5 minutes strait, bill nye style (even if it would be in character for ryland grace). overall, the setup had me sinking into my seat and huffing "this isn't what happened in the book...", which thankfully did not happen for the rest of the movie. -> the film is already so long but part of me longs for an alternate version where we get to see ilyukhina's kilogram block of heroin LMAO -> some plot beats were exchanged for "funny haha cinema comedy" moments and i'm a little sad/disappointed, though i do understand some. the one i most dislike is the fact that they changed the whole bit about eating being an uncomfortable, private process in eridian culture to "rocky eat beautifully hurr durr". -> the other thing is the general characterization of grace and rocky. grace in the beginning of the movie, before contact with blip-A, is played off as "haha screaming monkey man in space confused" rather than a fidgety science teacher unravelling what's happening to him with science. i get that it's now a part of his character that he talks to much, but ryan gosling's voice really does get grinding to hear at times in the beginning. i wish they made grace and rocky out to be the extremely capable scientists from their respective planets that they are in the book, working together and occasionally butting heads, rather than "comedic duo" all of the time. -> another thing about the acting (not a critique of the actual actors, more so the film direction), sometimes there are dramatic pauses for various reasons (whether that be comedy or tension), that are just baaaaaaarelyyy too long to be within reason and really take me out of the film. kind breaks my immersion and makes me remember that it's a movie lol -> the one aesthetic choice i questioned was the set design of blip-A. the whole setting up communication was shortened a lot (which made me SAD because i loved that part of the book; it made me weep from joy) and the lighting and set/prop design made it quite difficult to follow what was happening at times, even after having read the book. -> at the ending, i love that we get to see eva rifling through the logs grace sent back and traveling through the now-frozen sea back on earth, but the bits on erid aren't as strong. they cut out the me-burger, and the fact that they're in a biodome isn't clearly communicated enough. my friend was greatly confused because she thought they were back on earth and didn't realize they were on erid until a bit after the "who can tell me the speed of light?" scene, while the credits were rolling. unideal. without the internal monologue, you can't tell that grace fully thinks in eridian numbers now or that he's getting old and tired + cane user rep. it also cuts out the eridian organ that they built for him to communicate with, sadsad.

OVERALL: strangely enough, the weakest bits were the start and the end, but once the story really got going it was excellent. i love the aesthetic direction of this film. i didn't like some of the changes to the story, but i enjoyed others greatly. again, i think the best way to enjoy phm is to first read the book and then be re-introduced to the story (and get emotionally wrecked by it all over again) through a whole new lens when you watch the movie.

book notes:

i enjoy how andy weir's writing has improved since "the martian". my biggest gripe with that one was how much hand-waving there was and skipping over scientific details. project hail mary addresses that, perhaps a liiiiiittle bit to the detriment of the movie adaptation, but it was what drew me in initially.

i love the "flavor" that grace's internal monologue has; it's interesting being inside his head.

hail mary, full of grace, for a long shot mission. AH! i get it. funny clever poetic beautiful.

i greatly enjoy how rocky and grace's setting up of communication was. AA!! it's genuinely so clever, i had me kicking my feet and giggling the whole time. my favorite bit of the book with many great moments.

slightly related to the last one, i love how intelligent both parties are made out to be. they're (presumably) the best of the best from their respective planets, or at the very least skilled scientists/engineers. i enjoy how the fandom hasn't been reductive towards rocky and made him the "cute dumb alien dog". that man is 300-something years old, has a job as an aerospace engineer, and is married X)

also, it's not clear if the eridians even have sexes/a concept of gender. they might just be strange little genderless hermaphrodites that don't even realize there's other sexes, since they only ever meet one sex of human. they might think "he/him" is just the generic third-person pronoun in human-lish lol. huh, they also don't know of any other human languages or cultures (at least of what's shown to us in the book). something to think about...

i deeply enjoy the cultural differences between eridians and humans explored in the book, particularly their sleeping and eating habits. feels very real and i love it so so much.

screaming at how nerdy and real everything about the (in-universe) project hail mary's creation is. the fact that it's name is a pun?? the beetles??? augh i love

i love the clever explanations for why things happen in the story without it feeling too "chekhov's gun"-y or "deus ex machina"-y. like with the fact that rocky has excess fuel because eridians don't know about relativity yet and overestimated how much they'd need, rocky's species having better mental computing capacity and thus carrying much of the weight for the language barrier being broken, and the fact that they have nitrogen because dubois chose it as his method of assisted suicide. all of these are skipped over in the movie i think. sad :C

i love the adrian action sequence, it's so well done. my breath followed that of the characters. i was so tense and internally screaming in terror the whole time while my boys got banged up bouncing around the hail mary.

the parallels between grace and stratt..... OUGHGHGHHGH they make me ILL. someone who stepped up to a position knowing they were going to have to do what needed to be done and come out of it the most hated person on the planet so no one else had to. someone who was forced onto a spaceship screaming then was hailed as a hero. OUGHHGHHG

OVERALL: love love love amaze amaze amaze <3333. PLEASE read the book and watch the movie, in that order. truly one of the best literary experiences i've been on. i'm now on my way to find any and all additional material and lore, watch cast & production interviews, and tear apart AO3's catalogue. MAN i love this storyl

[bean-bog-blog]

wings of fire book 16: final notes + shitty review

VERY SPOILERY, obviously. all just my opinion, also obviously. harass me if you like lmao it'll get ignored

verdict:

i didn't like it that much. it was ok enough to read in chunks before going to sleep each night but it wasn't that good. i know i'm being super critical in this review, but i truly do love the wof universe and its characters.

rating:

4.4/10

recommendation:

if you wanna stay up to date with the fandom or whatever, sure, but on its own? nah. i don't recommend this book.

notes below cut

general notes:

this is the first wof book i've read in a while... probably four years? since book 15 lol.

i don't remember the writing being this... YA-esque? like it's always been a young adult/children's book but this part of the writing really jumped out at me (in a bad way) this time around. the dialogue is so stilted and unnatural at time, combined with the exposition dumping, it just made me remember my old fics on AO3 instead of enjoying the book.

some of the descriptions (whether that be of dragons, objects, spaces, etc.) are so obtuse i genuinely had kind of a hard time visualizing what tui was trying to say. i'm not a low-level reader either lmao, i just get the striking feeling that, again, reminds me of some particularly beginner fics i've read and written.

story notes:

i dislike all of this new lore SO MUCH. what the fuck is going on?? it's so ridiculous and convoluted, and leaves gaping plot holes in the rest of the universe. why did tui feel the need to rewrite so much of her universe??

—> i get that the skywing and nightwing queens were supposed to be made out as "extra extra cruel muehehe evil" whatever, but sending two entire tribes to a Fuck Ass Magic Forever prison for one (1) political murder (something that happens all the goddamn time btw) is just cartoonishly evil. plus, it's just a wedge shoved up the rest of the plot's ass to retroactively add the fact that all dragons came from pyrrhia, and it SHOWS that the other books weren't written with that in mind when you read them.

—> what do you mean there were two whole other tribes living on pyrrhia, and they just got... forgotten? the book doesn't even say "oh, ho ho, precipice casted a spell to make everyone forget about two entire tribes of dragons" (which would still be an incredibly stupid explanation), we're just expected to believe that every trace of the leafwings and beetlewings were just wiped from memory. did none of the other tribes remember them?? how did they even remove all physical evidence of their existences so completely???

—> how the fuck did some of them not go to the Fuck Ass Magic Forever prison? were they just let go? if so, how did knowledge of pantala come back to pyrrhia? did they not come to round up their Magic Forever Prisoners??? <- cause we know that clearsight had knowledge of it by the time of darkstalker's events.

—> same with the dungeon isle. if the skywings had a Fuck Ass Magic Forever Prison, had they forgotten about it when the whole darkstalker shit came around? did they choose to not say anything and just let the icewings and nightwings deal with it and find a way to imprison him on their own??? what the fuck guys

how are there enough new dragons coming in that the dungeon isle isn't inbred to shreds...

the explanation for mulberry being able to pass the barrier is Cool In Theory I Guess but the dialogue and exposition to actually explain it is so forced i physically cringed while reading it.

some of the book felt so strikingly modern that it stood out from the tone of the rest of the entire series. particularly the whole aurora subplot. what the fuck do you mean they have concerts?? and drumsets????? this is just gazelle from zootopia but dragon. plus there's an ACTUAL singer named AURORA and their appearance here just broke my immersion every time. aughghhg

the sharpwings and barrier and magical shit feel like they belong in a whole different book series/universe. i feel like tui has so many New Random ideas and wants to put them somewhere, but is too afraid to start a new Dragon Book Series after being in the wof universe for so long that she now has to jam them into an already overbloated world.

the mudwing siblings are handled in such a disappointing way. they really have nothing to them.

—> umber is an incredibly generic and boring protagonist, and he's basically clay 2.0. he's supposed to be this fun bubbly jokey younger brother character now forced into a serious position and has to take care of sora, but we get to see so little of his previous characterization that it basically means nothing. i felt nothing for him at the start, and i ended the book feeling nothing for him. damn.

—> SORA, oh SORA... she's the one i was actually intrigued by. the prospect of her trying to live after murdering two dragons, of her being a danger to the rest of dragon society, was so fascinating to me! i actually loved her characterization at the start of the book! i get that it's Dungeon Isle Magic Shit but i hate that she mellowed out so much... she's just Some Generic Mudwing now, and by the end of the book the Soft Shy Caring Sister character is in a motherly position toward the grey egg. i wanted to see more of her grappling with her hatred for icewings and learning to deal with her dangerous tendencies. NOOO.... we were robbed...

there are so many new characters with a single personality trait introduced. i really really don't care for any of them. platypus is loud and angry, quokka is scared and overburdened, dugong is derpy and gets beat on, royal is a haughty sad boy, queen beryl and king snakeroot are two different flavors of Crazy Monarch. s i g h . none of them are fleshed out enough for me to care.

it's also showing the cracks in tui's naming system, cause i'm genuinely hearing dragons with the goofiest names ever and i CANNOT take them seriously. the angry leader of the revolution is supposed to be named... platypus??? quokka? wollemi? FUCKING BERYL AND MULBERRY?? these names are so bad i'm crying i can't even take these characters seriously anymore.

also the constant Romance Everywhere is pissing me off. mulberry and umber would be cute if there wasn't So Much Shit going on and if umber was an actual character. then there's ships left and right that we get introduced to through one (1) singular paragraph of PDA and never see anything of again. aurora and platypus. wollemi and quokka. dugong and sora are implied, i think?? and there's definitely others that i'm missing. i dislike it intensely, it brings nothing to the story!

the pacing was so awful. we trodded around the dungeon isle for 300 pages, saw a concert, went to the library, then it escalated from finding the sharpwing nest and nineteen to mulberry getting kidnapped and storming the palace with the whole revolution and trying to overthrow the king and queen in one chapter! idk it might just be my perception but all the plot was really crammed into one end.