Spoilers for this book, because I’m NOT recommending it and I very much would like y’all to know why.
The blurb from Amazon is:
An astronaut returns to Earth after losing her entire crew to an inexplicable disaster, but is her version of what happened in space the truth? Or is there more to the story…A tense, psychological thriller perfect for fans of Dark Matter and The Martian.
That sounded intriguing and I’m always down for sci-fi thrillers, but this books so relentlessly stupid that I only finished so that I could full articulate how much I disliked it. A bullet point list of incredibly stupid things that happened in this novel, because it doesn’t deserve full paragraphs:
*The main character went on a nine year mission where she was the only survivor and didn’t remember the middle part where the rest of the crew died (or became unicorns, you don’t know what happens on alien planets, man). She made it back to Earth and started having memory gaps that involved waking ups in parts of NASA HQ that she had no reason to be in and told not a single person about it. Including her mandated therapist. Or her husband who also worked for NASA.
*Six astronauts go to another planet, the journey there AND back is years long and when they get to the planet they apparently offload all the supplies they’d need to make that return journey. As if the need to leave an alien planet NOW and not after you spend two days reloading supplies never occurred to them.
*NASA as depicted in this book somehow thought it was a good idea to send a man who was in love with one of his married colleagues on a years long space mission with her. Because there’s no way that would cause friction while they were trapped together on a spaceship for NINE YEARS.
*The main character eventually realizes she has been infected with an alien, which takes the form of parasitic telepathic spores. She keeps running around in public like it isn’t an issue to be filled with parasitic, telepathic, violent, hate humans spores. And then has sex with her new love interest. Who she hated until two days before. Maybe she was actually hoping to infect him with the parasitic, telepathic alien spores?
*NASA as depicted in this book shows little to no interest in the memory lapses of the two surviving astronauts who went through wormholes.
*NASA as depicted in this book has terrible, TERRIBLE quarantine protocols. We’d all be infected with parasitic, telepathic alien spores within two days, y’all. SO BAD.
*NASA as depicted in this book FINALLY believe that the parasitic, telepathic alien spores are a threat to the new group of astronauts they’ve sent through the wormhole. The solution is apparently to send the main character (the one infected with the parasitic, telepathic alien spores) and her new love interest (who was an admin at NASA and has had little to no astronaut training) after the other group. And do so in a matter of months, because it’s really easy to put together a spaceship that must sustain two people for years. They just had to get it off the shelf and dust it off, basically, super easy, don’t know why more countries haven’t accomplished the whole space thing.
So, yeah. Didn’t like this one very much. I don’t recommend you waste your time on it.