An interesting and engaging read. I haven’t read as many of Wellington’s books as I would like, but he’s a very good writer. Fans of science fiction should definitely give this a try.

The Last Astronaut is about Sally Jansen on a mission to Mars that ended badly. Her failure is eating away at her until NASA reaches out to her for help. It seems a large alien object is headed to Earth.

It has enough twists and turns to keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

THE LAST ASTRONAUT is a fascinating near-future Science Fiction novel of Space Exploration in which both Technology and the human heart and spirit play essential roles. From an explosive horrifying beginning to the incredibly unexpected end, author David Wellington keeps readers absolutely engrossed and turning those pages with heart in mouth. Multiple characters, in Space and planetbound, and a delectable but terrifying exposition of Alien Sentience keep readers riveted. Ultimately satisfying, THE LAST ASTRONAUT will linger in memory continuing to engender consideration.

Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for this early copy!

Did not finish - I could not connect with the plot or writing so I decided to put it down.

"The Last Astronaut" eBook was published in 2019 and was written by David Wellington (https://davidwellington.net). Mr. Wellington has published more than two dozen novels.

I categorize this novel as ‘R’ because it contains scenes of Violence and Mature Language. The story is set in the near future. The US space program has abandoned manned flight after a fatal accident on their Mars mission.

Now years later an object has been sighted moving through the Solar System that has altered its corse to head towards Earth. The object is huge and clearly is not of natural origin. Even though there have been repeated attempts to communicated, there has been no reply.

A mission must be quickly put together and sent out to investigate. With no time to truly train new astronauts, the commander of the failed Mars mission, Sally Jansen, is drafted to lead the NASA team. The commercial company KSpace is also sending a crew out to meet the object.

The KSpace crew beats Jansen’s to the object and they find the KSpace craft abandoned. Quickly Jansen leads part of her crew into the alien craft to find the KSpace crew. What they find is totally alien to anything they had expected. Before long the rescue mission turns into a struggle for survival.

Not only must Jansen try to hold the mission together, but she must also face many personal demons from the disastrous Mars mission.

I thought that the 9.5+ hours I spent reading this 401-page science fiction novel were interesting. This was a dark story. While the plot was OK, I did not enjoy the story as much as I had thought I would. The cover art is OK but could have reflected more of the story. I give this novel a 3.3 (rounded down to a 3) out of 5.

Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/.

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This is the first book by Wellington that I've read, but it won't be the last. It was an interesting sci-fi that was totally engaging.

My first David Wellington read and hopefully not my last. I love apocalyptic novels especially unique versions of how the world might end. Plus including recent news events and incorporating them into the story also checks all my boxes. Science-fiction novel but hits all my marks. Exciting, thought provoking and always entertaining. Highly recommended.

Horror writer David Wellington, veteran of zombie novels, has turned to sci-fi in The Last Astronaut. He proves himself to be quite comfortable in this new genre. The last astronaut is Sally Jansen whose ill-fated mission basically ended the US space program. Now, years later, an alien object seems to be navigating toward earth, and Jansen is called on to lead a mission to intercept it.



I have to admit my bias--this is my favorite sci-fi genre: first contact, alien object. It reminded me a little of Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, although it's been decades since I read that one. Jansen and crew arrive at the object only to discover that a private space mission has beat them to it, and the crew is nowhere to be found. Jansens crew enters the object to track down the other crew.



When it turns out that the object isn't a space ship, but an organic, living being, the story really gets interesting. Like viral microbes inside an animal, the human crew has to figure out how to communicate with the being, prevent it from crashing into the earth, and stay alive inside the alien environment.



The Last Astronaut took some unexpected turns and had some pleasant surprises. As you might expect, not everyone will survive this adventure, but survival looks different from what you do expect. Far be it from me to compare Wellington to Clarke; I don't imply that he can measure up. But hey, that's Clarke, who does? Wellington does hold his own and writes a good story that fits well in the adventure sci-fi/horror genre.





Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Careful exploration of inner and outer space

There’s a lot to like about this book. The character- and world-building are phenomenal and I found myself heavily invested in the character of Sally Jansen especially. I didn’t agree with the whole demonization when she chose to save her crew, but that is probably how the world would take it. Overall, this was a great book that I really, really enjoyed right up until the point where you find out more about the alien ship. I found that part disappointing and limiting the scope of the book. Others may totally not agree, but I would have liked the aliens to have been a bit different, and therefore the conclusion didn’t really work for me. Because I enjoyed the book so much up until the point, I’m only knocking it down one star.

Astronaut Sally Jansen had retired from NASA after a disastrous Mars mission. When a large unidentified space object enters Earth's solar system, Jansen must return to NASA and solve the mystery of this threat. Well written.

On the whole, The Last Astronaut was a compulsive, high energy, action driven story with a cast of well-rounded characters. A first contact story that had some definite Alien/Prometheus vibes. The book itself reads more like the manuscript for a movie then a book and I wouldn't be surprised if it makes it to the big screen.

Why only 3 stars? About halfway through, when my mind and jangled nerves were thoroughly invested in the fate of the crew, the description of the alien 'craft' goes into overdrive. Don't get me wrong, the imagery is first rate (I still can't get it out of my head), but it's unfortunate that it's at the expense of the characters and storyline flow.

That being said, I still recommend it for those diehard sci-fi lovers out there and I look forward to reading more from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit Books for providing a digital copy in return for an honest, unbiased review.

"The Last Astronaut" is a compelling hybrid scifi-horror story, one that shakes up reader expectations, and exploring those story perceptions and more are topics covered in the Writers, After Dark interview with author David Wellington.

First contact is the kind of experience that’s ripe for miscommunications and misinterpretations that can literally reshape the world.

From more traditional hard sci-fi stuff, like Clarke to Reynolds, to the more literary offerings of LeGuin or Russell (she wrote THE SPARROW), first contact is a recurring theme in speculative fiction.

While there’s a million different ways to parse and taxonomize this (sub) genre, you can trace a big divide between texts that explore first contact with aliens who share fundamental premises of existence with humans (in psychology, if not in size or number of eyes) and texts in which the aliens are really, really… alien (think “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, which is portrayed in the movie Arrival).

David Wellington’s THE LAST ASTRONAUT belongs to the latter category. Let’s just say that there are no little green moon men here.

Sunny Stevens knows something that no one else does. There’s an object heading for earth, and it’s slowing down. Objects in space do not, as a rule, slow down. Unless they’re braking. Bursting with the world-changing knowledge of an imminent alien arrival, Stevens leaves the corporate world of KSpace and uses his discovery to bargain his way onto the first NASA mission to the approaching object.

While Stevens is completely untested as an astronaut, mission commander Sally Jansen is not. She was supposed to be the first woman on Mars, but when a terrible accident derailed the mission and her life over twenty years ago, she gave up any hope of ever returning to space. Now she’s in command again and searching for a shot at redemption. Stevens and Jansen are joined by the astrobiologist Parminder Rao, who’s spent her whole life hoping for first contact, and Major Windsor Hawkins, who’s just following orders.

Jansen’s crew heads out to the object, but KSpace is sending their own team, and now there’s a race to figure out why the aliens are here as well as what exactly they are. When the KSpace team disappears inside the alien object, Jansen launches a search and rescue mission with dire consequences.

I hesitate to say more, because the plot is so closely tied to what the crew finds on and in the object. I’ll just say that THE LAST ASTRONAUT floats somewhere between an idea story with hints of a thriller and a little horror mixed in.

The plot moves along at a nice clip. There’s a frame story that allows Wellington a good degree of flexibility to give readers technical information and perspectives. I sort of forgot what the big idea of the frame story was, but I liked the effect while I was reading.

The weakest part of the novel is probably the characters. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not terrible! It’s just that they all feel about ¾ finished. I would have liked to see one more facet of each them–something they loved back on earth, that makes their sacrifices worth it. For example, while Jansen is driven to redeem herself and Rao is driven to discover more about the alien(s) by her natural curiosity and Steven’s death, their motivations aren’t much deeper than that. Major Hawkins might as well be a cardboard cutout.

It’s not a fatal flaw, but it’s part of the reason I couldn’t bump up the rating.

Astute readers won’t be surprised by either the plot or the ending of THE LAST ASTRONAUT but Wellington hits his marks and it’s an enjoyable first-contact story.

Published by Orbit on July 23, 2019

The Last Astronaut is a first contact novel. Early in the story, the contact kills an astronaut. If you have seen any of the Alien movies, you’re familiar with the concept. Fortunately, although the novel feels like a patchwork of ideas borrowed from Alien and Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama and a couple of Star Trek episodes, the story offers a moderate measure of fun for readers, particularly those who don’t read much science fiction and are not put off by the absence of fresh ideas.

The story begins in the past. Sally Jansen is the mission commander of a crew traveling to Mars when something goes wrong. She jettisons a part of the ship to save the rest of it, killing a crew member and aborting the mission. Whether Sally is a hero for saving the ship and the rest of the crew or a failure for allowing a death divides opinion at NASA.

About 20 years later, Sunny Stevens is working for a private NASA competitor when he observes an object approaching Earth that has spontaneously started to slow. His employer doesn’t seem to care, so he quits and goes to work for NASA. Parminder Rao, an astrobiologist, is pulled from her project and assigned to the discovery. Sally Jansen is recruited to join the team, returning to NASA after a long absence. Windsor Hawkins is added as the representative from Space Force. The astronauts are sent to make first contact with what is assumed to be an alien vessel. They actually make second contact, as a ship launched by Stevens’ former employer beats them to the prize.

The dual themes of The Last Astronaut will be familiar to science fiction fans. First, our ignorance is vast. Any aliens that humans encounter are likely to be truly alien. Making assumptions based on our limited knowledge of how things work on Earth is more likely to impede than to assist understanding. Second, the tendency of hawks in or out of the military is to kill anything they don’t understand, and that tendency will certainly assert itself in any first contact with aliens.

The secret of the alien ship is revealed a bit more than halfway through the novel. Science fiction fans will have guessed that secret in the novel’s early pages (again, the concept is far from original) but the real question is what our intrepid space travelers will do once they learn the truth. Their actions are predictable, but they keep the story moving. The ending is so artificially upbeat that I didn’t buy it. Some of the action on the way to the ending is nevertheless entertaining in an unchallenging, summer beach read way.

A few details of the story don’t make much sense. For example, the description of its airlocks is difficult to reconcile with what we learn about the nature of the alien ship. More problematic are the melodramatic efforts to bolster Jansen’s heroism. The novel drags when expository sections remind the reader of Jansen’s fears and courage. At several points I was muttering “just get on with it.” About 20% of The Last Astronaut could have been trimmed. Even then, the story would not be meaty, but it would have been a better action/adventure novel if its efforts to make the reader feel sympathy for Jensen had been less forced.

If you want to read an action/adventure novel with science fiction trappings and you don’t mind stock characters, you might enjoy The Last Astronaut. If you have read a fair amount of science fiction, you won’t find anything fresh here.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

“There was no clear delineation between the darkness external and internal.”
What would you do if you were given a second chance? You worked your entire life to achieve your dream, before something horrific happens and that dream is snuffed out?
Through Sally Jansen, the last astronaut, we get to experience just that.
David Wellington has created an immense work of sci-fi/horror and I’m so thankful I saw Lilyn from Sci-Fi & Scary’s review for this book. Because of her review, I snagged this on Netgalley and it is easily in my top 5 reads of the year.
Sally was the mission commander of NASA’s manned trip to Mars. After an accident happens, and an astronaut dies, Sally is blamed and the space program is defunded, put aside while private firms begin to focus on space exploration.
Then Wellington introduces the amazing to us. What was believed to be an asteroid that has entered our solar system, doesn’t act like one. It’s believed to be a spaceship. So Sally is recruited and leads a group to the suspected ship to make first contact.
Everything about this story was cinematic and massive. I couldn’t believe the visual scope created here and I felt like I was reading a Ridley Scott script at times. Think Alien meets The Thing meets The Martian for the style of story that plays out.
I’ve always loved the idea put forth of Ancient Aliens and those star folks who came before, etc. This played right into it and I ate it up.
I’ve already told a dozen people that they need to read this book ASAP and in every message I’ve said – “read this before it becomes a movie.”
As the story unfolds and we get deeper into the alien idea, Wellington ramps up the horror, the terror and the psychological dread. It was superb. This was the most recent book to actual infiltrate my dreams, which is very rare, but also shows just how much I was devouring this read.
This should be on everyone’s must read lists, if only to then be moved to their top reads of the year lists.

** This review will feature on Kendall Reviews! **

Received from NetGalley for my review:

My review is that this book sucked.

This book sucked all the little joy that's in the world (that joy that comes from reading) out of it. It was a chore to read, dull, flat, confusing and just plain annoying.

Let's start with the formatting. It was meant to be clever, I think? A story interspersed with excepts from interviews, with the author making an appearance as a fictional person. Like he gathered these 'facts' of the book and pieced them together. It was different. Did it work? No. It just was odd and creepy. But the thing is, it states that the excerpts / clips from the individual people (noted with their name and in italics) was from interviews after the Orion 6 mission. Ok, makes sense. Yet the excerpts continued for the Orion 7 mission which makes me think, the whole time, that it was interview conducted later about the mission, just like the first. But that ended up not being the case so how the fuck did the real author turned fictional author get these excerpts? It made ZERO sense. None, at all.

The characters were flat and annoying. Not a likable one of the lot. If I HAD to pick one, then Roy McAllister was the most human of them, the one that you could like (a little) and get behind. Of the others? Nope. Hated Sally, HATED Hawkins, disliked Sunny and Rao seemed like an afterthought until she wasn't so by then, I hadn't cared about her at all.

I could go on, but I've wasted enough time talking about it, time to forget about it.

Note for authors who have their books turned into audiobooks - it's never a good thing to have changing volumes. I know, like the book, it was meant to be clever. But the excerpts - whatever the hell they were - was done several volumes lower than the normal text. I had to turn it all up and boost it so I could hear the excerpts and even then it was hard to hear if there was any kind of external noise. Also, music during the book makes zero sense...

I'm not sure this book was really for me. I had trouble keeping up with the style of writing. While I liked the idea of it being written as though it were a history book, I had trouble keeping up with the change in POV. It all felt a little disjointed. The story was interesting. I didn't connect with any of the characters though. Perhaps this is meant more for someone with a love for horror as well as science fiction.

This book wasn't for me. I thought it would be more interesting than it was and had to force myself to finish it! The style of narration annoyed me, so it was really hard to get into the story.

I received a free advanced readers copy or The Last Astronaut by David Wellington in exchange for my honest opinion. This book wasn't quite what I thought it would be, which isn't to say it was bad. It had much more of a horror bent with regard to first contact and a potential alien invasion than I had been expecting from the synopsis. Due to both the setting on a seemingly empty space ship and the author's descriptions that I found hard to follow at times, I felt very much in the dark as a reader throughout most of the book. In sure this was intentional but I had a tough time staying invested or interested in the story or what was happening to the characters because of it. Overall, I'd give this book 3 stars because it was just ok.

Astronaut Sally Jansen was leading the first manned mission to Mars when disaster struck. She lost one crew member, returned to earth and felt responsible for the demise of NASA manned flight. Sally is mothballed until an object is discovered that is on a collision course with earth. The object is slowing down in space, which isn't typical behavior for random space objects.

Sally is pulled out of quasi-retirement to lead a mission to investigate what must only be an alien spacecraft. Losing the race to a commercial space company that intercepts the craft first, Jansen finds herself in the position of not only trying to save her own crew, but also the crew of the other ship, and earth itself. The astronauts board the ship and discover a strange, terrifying, and dangerous world, which most certainly will destroy earth if it's path can not be swayed. This sci-fi thriller is hard to put down.