After being mostly disappointed by Artemis and The Martian I was quite wary of this one. Perhaps my expectations were more reasonable this time around, but I think it was also a better book. Considering how those other books were trying their hardest to stay within a reasonable level of scientific accuracy and plausibility I was completely surprised that there turned out to be an alien in this one. An intelligent sentient species no less. He also just kind of showed up out of nowhere and I was in disbelief that that was the direction the story was going for a bit.

Like someone else mentioned I did find the book to be a bit too much “for all ages” kind of thing. Like it was intentionally written so that it could some day be a PG movie for both kids and adults. There is nothing wrong with this of course it is just not my usual thing. I did find it a bit eye rolling at times how great this supposed average teacher was at any kind of science and alien communication. Rocky was clearly the best character in my opinion. If he wasn’t there to offset the whole lone savior idea like The Martian I don’t think I would have enjoyed this book.

The science bits were a bit too sciencey and not enough fictiony for my tastes, but I don’t think it is Weir’s style to try and make up his own fictional science. Almost all of the science was just real science and math. I think the only thing that was pretty much entirely made up was the idea that something like astrophage and its neutrino harvesting amoeba could exist. I did like the details given for everything Ryland and Rocky were doing.

I kind of wish he actually managed to get back to Earth. It felt like a bit of a cop out for us to never fully see the impact to Earth. We know that at least somebody survived, but I wanted to see the scale of the damage. Anyway I liked this book more than I expected and I’ll more than likely read whatever book Weir publishes next.

I gave up on The Martian because I hated the writing, especially the dialogue. So I wasn’t sure how I was going to get on with this. And once again I found the writing to be grating. I rolled my eyes a lot. I was pretty much about to give up when he noticed the other ship. That alone got me to finish the book.

All the first contact stuff was pretty great and by far my favourite part of the book. I enjoyed the vast majority of that. The slow reveal of what happened I thought was done quite well but I didn’t much care about it. Once Rocky (I hated the name though) came onto the scene I had little interest in the other stuff. Overall it seems I like Weir as a storyteller but hate him as a writer. The science stuff was weird as Grace seems to really love explaining the most basic of things that a scientist should just know. I get that he was a teacher but still. Also the fact that music was never mentioned was a strange omission.

Not sure I’d read another of his. Might just wait for the inevitable film. Not sad I read it though.