In the near future, Sally Jansen is the leader of a NASA mission to Mars, but it goes wrong and she has to let one of her crewmembers die, nixing the mission and leading America losing the "Race to Mars" to China. Several years later, she's obscure and washed up, but gets an unexpected second chance when a mysterious object (similar to the Oumanuma one IRL) enters the solar system. When NASA detects it decelerating, they determine it's a spaceship rather than just a comet or chunk of extrasolar rock. Even since Jansen's failure, NASA was underbudgeted and never launched any other space missions, so she's the only person in America other than competing private space companies to have any experience with space-walking. She's selected to have a second chance and lead a new team to the mysterious object, but when they get there, as you can imagine, they find scary monsters intent on killing them in horrible ways, their own personal demons, and of course the agenda of the ship itself, which does NOT come in peace!
So yeah, you can tell just by the description that the basic premise of the story isn't THAT original, though it does have a cool "survival in space" aspect that's a little similar to Weir's famous 'Martian' story. It's well written, though Weir's protagonist is much more likable than this one. This isn't to say Wellington's characterization is bad, though--he convincingly portrays Jansen as haunted by failure and making mistakes because of it; even if you don't like her you understand why she acts as she does. However, all the other characters--the military guy, the folks on the ground, the crew of the competing private space company, and so on--aren't very likable either; the only one I really came close to liking was Jansen's crew's doctor.
The strong points of this book were the scientific background; the trip to the UFO as well as the attempts at surviving on (and in) it when things go wrong were given almost (though not quite, there were some handwaving things here and there) as rigorous a treatment as in The Martian. The reveal of the alien's objectives and how humans could interact with it was also pretty well done, though IMO the very end went a little bit towards 'deus ex machina' territory in its attempt to avoid an unhappy ending, though I'll say no more than that to avoid spoilers. But there were some very creepy monsters and it was satisfying to watch the mystery unfold, so I'll give this four stars!
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From the Publisher
The Last Astronaut by David Wellington
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Reviews with images
Exploratory hard-SF with a horror element.
Deeply involved story of First Contact with space alien(s). Not a short read. Lots of explanation that provides interesting background, but can lose you at times. The characters are not particularly likable, but they are not evil, and you feel for them. The monsters provide that ultimate dread that comes from knowing that the extinction to Mankind could be brought about, but you feel for them too. Took me a while, but I’m glad I finished the book.
Top reviews from other countries
Chris Puddephatt
Excellent story let down by poor proof reading
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 21, 2021