The Last Astronaut

By: David Wellington

Narrated by: Megan Tusing

Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's Summary

Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2020!

"A terrifying tour de force." (James Rollins)

"Readers will be riveted." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

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. Out of time and out of options, NASA turns to Jansen. But as the object reveals its secrets, Jansen and her crew find themselves in a desperate struggle for survival - against the cold vacuum of space and something far, far worse....

"Breathless, compulsive reading." (Christopher Golden)

"A suspenseful, fast-paced story of first contact." (Kirkus)

©2019 David Wellington (P)2019 Hachette Audio

Critic Reviews

"A gripping story that reveals its horrors one inexorable, plausible detail at a time. Readers will be riveted - and will want to keep all the lights on." (Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"The Last Astronaut bridges the worlds of science fiction and horror perfectly--Wellington melds the awe of discovery with the terror of the unknown to keep readers riveted to every page." (Fred Van Lente, New York Times best-selling author of The Con Artist)

"If Stephen King had written a haunted house story set in space, it would look very much like The Last Astronaut. Written with an uncompromising, white-knuckled pace, here is book that will leave you shaking and looking at the cold depths of space with equal parts horror and wonder." (James Rollins, number one New York Times best-selling author of Crucible)

The Alien is great, The Character's... aren't.

The main idea of the story is fantastic, but almost ruined by the bad character design. I almost got the feeling of reading some sort of cheesy romance book you'd only find in some sitcom, and the characters made such idiotic decisions that no professional would ever make.

Not your regular astronaut

Astronauts on a mission of first contact dominated by random emotions, non logical decisions, and so thin skinned? I don’t think so.

Nice production, excellent performance.

I'm writing this review to praise Megan Tusing's performance mainly. The story was decent enough to serve as a framework for the audio performance. If I'd read this book I wouldn't have had as enjoyable an experience, but listening was engaging and it moved at a good pace, was consistent, and kept my interest. I OFTEN lose interest in sci fi stories at about the 60% point where I realize the author is in over their head. The books I truly love to read Audible doesn't produce, or I prefer to read them to lengthen my time with them. This story however kept me coming back to find out what happened and I largely attribute that to the performance by the narrator.
Her ability to switch voices was quite impressive and I always knew who was talking, male or female. The interstitial elements (flashback type things) were nicely differentiated by tone and sound effects so they didn't confuse things. The overall production and quality was top notch, some of the best I've enjoyed on Audible. It's no Rendezvous with Rama (hint!), but gems like that are rare. I agree with an Amazon review saying it is made for the screen. This is a good story and a great performance which makes it recommended for the entertainment value. Killer for a long road trip!

Good story with stupid characters

Good premise with a solid intro, but it goes to unbelievable crap pretty quick. The characters seem to follow what ever their primary hang up is without even the first thought toward professional restraint or process. Make the characters better, and you might have good story, till then this is a cheesy movie script.

A bit slow and definitely disappointing

If you remember watching Spock float endlessly around VGer in Star Trek I, you have some feel for what a lot of this book is like. Slow is just not sufficient as a description. The same thing happens for pages at a time. Step-by-step-by-overly described step.

I also found the characters unbelievable. We're only going to send four people into space to meet alien life and these are the four we pick? Really? Very disappointed that the military guy becomes the absolute stereotypical gung ho soldier. The other characters aren't much better, though. Too much angst. Not a believable set of astronauts -- even the one who was supposed to be one.

One other comment -- I found the reader hard to stomach. Too much breathless drama. I did finally find a good solution by using Amazon's 1.5X speed. At that speed, I found her reading almost palatable.

Overall, just a disappointing book.

Good not Great

Narration was Great story was so so. Interesting enough to keep me listening but not enough to get me jazzed.

Pace

Probably a more realistic pace to the story, but I found this a bit dull and forgettable.

Outstanding! Creative! A 6 for the narrator!!

Outstanding! Creative! A 6 for the narrator!! I wouldn't change a thing! Simply a thrilling listen from start to finish!

I’m sorry, but, no…

The story is unique and could have been interesting but for the terrible and repeated misrepresentation of solders, astronauts, scientists and business people. Every character, was a caricature of something real. It was embarrassing to hear breathless dialogue from supposed, trained professional astronauts and bureaucrats prattling endlessly about this love interest or that obsession.

I found there to be such an excess of words without meaning that I am wondering if the author was paid for volume rather than substance. If you are going to use a lot of words then explain interesting things about science or orbital dynamics, don’t drone on for pages about how the jump will be short and how the person feels about dying.

I am not a writer, but I am a reader, and one cannot read or listen to authors like Peter F Hamilton or Patrick O’Brien and then feel anything other than duped when reviews rave about something so mediocre.

All that said, good for you David Wellington for putting yourself out there like this. I hope I can build the courage some day. Just, please get better, and in the interim, don’t let publicists lie about the quality of your work.

Characters got too annoying to enjoy the sci-fi

This got off to a great start, and has some great sci-fi, but the characters got far too annoying to properly enjoy it. The author gives them an in-story justification for their complete irrationality, but that doesn't make it any less irritating.