I don’t read many sci-fi books in general anymore, so I don’t remember what made me put this on my list. Maybe an urge to expand what I’m reading. Maybe wanting to recapture my sci-fi phase from high school. Maybe just trying to challenge myself while my brain is not doing well. Who knows!
We follow a man who wakes up in a spaceship who is slowly remembering who he is and what he’s doing there. Ryland Grace is on a mission to save the earth from a strange space bacteria that is eating the sun, but he is alone because the two trained coworkers have died as they traveled to a distant star that appears to be immune to what is currently devouring our sun. Once there, he meets an alien on the same quest and they work together to find a way to save both of their planets.
While amnesia feels like a trope that has been overdone and is used to create some cheap tension, I actually really liked the way it was used here. The slow reveal of information being used as a means of moving the story forward in the present was probably the most interesting use of it that I can remember reading. Even though the final reveal at the end was ultimately not surprising after spending the book with Ryland, I still appreciated how it all came together.
One of the nicer things for me for this book is that there is a lot of science that I did not need to pay a lot of attention to. My brain is still bad, so having places where I could clearly take that mental break and come back later was amazing. There’s a lot of sections where Ryland and Rocky, the alien that he encounters in space, are going back and forth theorizing and hypothesizing where the journey to get to the conclusion can be interesting, but ultimately understanding is not necessary for understanding the book.
Overall, I really enjoyed the book! The pacing is quick and it was an interesting look at how even though humanity as a whole might be questionable, humans as individuals can be fantastic. There’s a nice feeling of peace at the end of it that I can take away. And also Rocky was just… I loved Rocky. Fantastic spider alien.