Review: The Last Astronaut by David Wellington

Title: The Last Astronaut

Author: David Wellington

Genre: Adult, horror, sci-fi

Publication date: July 2019

Published by: Orbit

Source: Borrowed

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Synopsis: Mission Commander Sally Jansen is Earth’s last astronaut–and last hope–in this gripping near-future thriller where a mission to make first contact becomes a terrifying struggle for survival in the depths of space.

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.

My rating: ★★★☆☆

I really loved this author’s other book Paradise-1 so I was really looking forward to reading more from him! Even though I didn’t love this as much as Paradise-1, I still liked it. I have been in the mood for sci-fi horror, and he really delivers!

So there’s this large object in space headed straight for Earth, an object that may or may not be a spaceship that has not attempted return communication, and an object that may or may not be alien in nature...

So NASA put together a team to send out and investigate what exactly this thing was and what it wanted. And boy do they find out!

This book was WILD! They actually reach the object, which they were calling 2I pretty early on in the book, which I was not expecting! But it was nice because things really got started off the bat, and you know I love a book with action! And this author, I have learned, does tension VERY well! As soon as they got there, I was STRESSED. I knew things were going to go all sorts of wrong, but good god I was not prepared.

One thing I liked about this book was the horror aspect. There was body horror in there that was just... ooof.

It was great! 😆 It was gross and tense and it made me anxious, which are all good things in a horror novel. Lol. But it was also very interesting figuring out what this object really was. I have never read anything like this before, so I really appreciated that. But it was also just so weird 😆 The story went in such an odd direction, and it really went for it. Lol. But you know what? I’m fine with it. It was weird but it was different and I liked that! Lol.

One thing that made me not enjoy this book as much as I did Paradise-1 was that I found it really hard to like the characters in this book. The characters in both books were flawed, which I like because otherwise they would be boring. But also, I just wasn’t as attached to them as I was to the characters in Paradise-1.

But that being said, overall, I liked this! The story was very intriguing, the reveal was WILD, and the horror aspect of the book was really good! I may not have connected with the characters as much as I would’ve liked, but The Last Astronaut was a really solid sci-fi horror novel that hit the spot.

Have you read this book? If so, what did you think about it? If not, what do you think? Does it sound like something you might want to read? Leave me a link to your review or comment below! 😊