Project Hail Mary is a competence novel and it knows it
I read this over a long weekend, which is the correct dose. It is a book with one gear and that gear is: a problem is stated, resources are counted, an experiment is run, the experiment fails informatively, a solution is found. Repeat, escalating. If you enjoy watching a person be good at their job, this is close to pure form.
The physics-and-improvisation stuff is genuinely fun. The best sequences are the ones where the protagonist has to measure something with the wrong instrument and reason his way to a number he can trust. There is a stretch involving a homemade apparatus and a very patient set of trials that I read with actual suspense, and nothing was in danger except an estimate.
The middle introduces a second character whose arrival I will not spoil, and that partnership is what lifts the book above its formula. The problem of establishing shared units and vocabulary from nothing is treated as an engineering task, and it is the most inventive part of the novel. It is also, unexpectedly, the emotional core.
The weaknesses are the ones you would guess. The voice is relentlessly jokey, and about halfway through I started wanting one page in which nobody quips. The flashback structure explains a great deal that could have been implied. And every institution in the book behaves with a decisiveness that no institution has ever had.
None of this stopped me finishing it in three days. It is a well-built machine with a very clear idea of what it is for. I would hand it to someone who says they do not read science fiction, and I would not hand it to someone who wants prose.
Note for the pile: this is the third book in a row I have read with a single narrator in a confined space. I should probably vary the diet.