The Egg (2009)

I enjoyed The Martian (novel and movie) but I didn't care for Artemis or Project Hail Mary. I thought the characters and dialogue were fairly weak, even though the underlying ideas were clever. Also I thought that "main character amnesia" was a frustrating plot device (in PHM).

Overall, his authorial voice reminds me a lot of YouTube hosts? Perhaps that's just the cultural moment we're in.

I like his concepts, and his stories, but agree about the characters. Every single one of them talks like a snarky sarcastic white dude. All the side characters in The Martian, the teenage girl in Artemis, and the rock alien in Project Hail Mary, all speak in the same voice, that of a jokey middle-aged dad.

His stories are always extremely clever and he has an insane sense of rythm. But I hate his style, it reads like a giant Reddit post. My wife asked why I kept complaining about this book I couldn't put down.

I had similar feelings for PHM, but it was hard to put a finger on why. I enjoyed it well enough to make it to the end, but I think I have a limited appetite for his "authorial voice". I read it directly after The Bone Clocks and remember thinking I missed David Mitchell's "voice" and wishing there were a way to experience books through another author's voice. Outside the copyright concerns, this could be an interesting use case for AI, a cover band for literature. It's definitely the only way we'll ever get Wes Anderson Star Wars