PROJECT HAIL MARY by Andy Weir

I enjoyed Project Hail Mary even more than The Martian. Instead of one man trying to survive on a foreign planet, this story is about one man trying to figure out how to save Earth from a micro-organism from another galaxy. He is light-years away to solve the problem when he meets Rocky, an alien that looks like a five-legged giant spider made of rocks. The two of them are in the Tau Ceti system for the same reason, and work together to save both their planets. But they must learn each others language and culture to do so. When they do find a solution, it causes even more problems.

This is a wonderful story that combines multiple scientific fields, including social sciences to explain what is happening and why the characters do what they do, but it never feels like too much. There is a lot of suspense in the story, right up into the last chapter that kept the pages turning. I also found the scenes that go back in time, and shown as Ryland Grace retrieving a past memory, easy to follow and relevant to what was happening in the current time.

I really enjoyed Project Hail Mary and I look forward to watching the movie version soon!

PENDERGAST: THE BEGINNING by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child 

I've read several of the Pendergast novels by Preston & Child, so when I learned that an origin story was releasing, I wanted to read it. Especially after rereading Relic last year. In this novel, Pendergast joins the New Orleans Field Office as a probationary FBI agent under Special Agent Chambers. When the two of them are suspended for not doing an investigation by the rules, Pendergast looks deeper into similar cases that could be related. But where Chambers wants to find a simple explanation, Pendergast believes nothing is that simple and once again goes against the rules to entertain his hunch. In the end, the case is not so simple and even more gruesome than Pendergast believed.

I really enjoyed this insight into Pendergast's beginnings as an FBI agent. It reveals how his mind works—very different from the average mind iykyk—while also giving us other details of his life, some of which have been revealed in other books in the series. And the epilogue is from Relic, so it's a smooth transition for those who haven't read it.

I do wonder if there will be a book written from an even earlier time in Pendergast's life, specifically his and Proctor's time with Ghost Company.