Sally Jansen was NASA’s leading astronaut, until a mission to Mars ended in disaster. Haunted by her failure, she lives in quiet anonymity, convinced her days in space are over.

She’s wrong.

A large alien object has entered the solar system on a straight course toward Earth. It has made no attempt to communicate and is ignoring all incoming transmissions.

Out of time and out of options, NASA turns to Jansen. For all the dangers of the mission, it’s the shot at redemption she always longed for.

But as the object slowly begins to reveal its secrets, one thing becomes horribly clear: the future of humanity lies in Jansen’s hands.

Sci-fi & horror go together like peanut butter & jelly. Like peanut butter & chocolate! Like peanut butter & & &….APPLES! BANANAS!! AND NUTELLA!!! PEANUT BUTTER AND NUTELLA SANDWICHES HOLY FUCK MMMMMMMNNGGGHAAAASGHAAAAAAA!!!!!

The Last Astronaut by David Wellington seemed like a book that was all the way up my street, and while I did enjoy much of it, there were certain aspects of this book that left me feeling super frustrated. The elevator pitch for this book would be like if The Martian and Arrival had a Xenomorph baby. And the Xenomorph baby grew up watching Armageddon on a loop. I mean, that’s cool, yeah? And it is. It is cool. The Last Astronaut opens & ends very strongly, I think. It’s just what’s in between that felt interminably sloggy at times.

Right away, I dug the sort of meta vibe of this book…with little interview passages, and the whole thing set up as almost a non-fiction book written by David Wellington. Sally Jansen is a NASA astronaut with a catastrophic failure in her past. She moves on to a different life…but then, you know…just when she thought she was out, they pull her back in.

There’s an object traveling through space, making its way towards Earth. It really draws the attention of a scientist named Sunny Stevens, who works for a privately owned corporation called KSpace. He makes the decision to bring his findings to NASA, effectively forfeiting his job with KSpace, and ensuring a healthy competition between the two organizations to be the first to reach the object, which is called 2I. I guess I wish the mysterious alien ship heading towards our planet had a cooler name than 2I, but there it is.

A crew of four is hastily put together, and they are off. Except…only one of them, Sally, has ever been to space. So…the entirety of their training for this dangerous mission is just basically glossed over in this book. Like, I wasn’t looking for a 100-page section devoted to astronaut training either, but I think some small amount of time could have been devoted to seeing these folks get prepared to be launched into space. But it just doesn’t happen, that whole span of time is skipped, and I think it was a missed opportunity for some serious character development (especially in regards to an on-ship romance that comes out of NOWHERE)

But anyway. To space we go. The first 1/3 of the book moves at a pretty brisk pace, and I was enjoying it. Wellington does a great job conveying a sort of oppressive quality to being in space, and he really drives home how unbearable it can be in a spacesuit for great lengths of time (like try not to think about that itch on your nose!!) We get to know the crew a little bit better, and while they’re a (mostly) likable bunch, there wasn’t anyone I immediately gravitated towards. Sally ultimately does make for a solid protagonist, someone with a ton of baggage & trauma, who just wants to right the wrongs in her past. It’s also really refreshing to see a woman in her 50’s in this role.

Where The Last Astronaut began to lose me is when they find a way inside 2I. Things take on a creepy tone, for sure. The horror elements kick in & things feel ominous af. But then…there’s just so…much…description. It felt endless at times, and my eyes would glaze over. Just detail upon detail of exactly how things looked & felt & sounded inside this alien craft. I think there’s a fine line that an author has to walk between really setting the scene & creating a visceral experience for the reader, or bogging the reader down with way more detail than is strictly necessary. For me, The Last Astronaut was definitely a case of the latter.

This is one that had a lot of ingredients I love, but it ultimately fell a little flat for me.

Thanks to Orbit for the copy!!