Vessel
A Novel
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3.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Perfect for fans of Dark Matter and The Martian, an astronaut returns to Earth after losing her entire crew in an inexplicable disaster in this tense, psychological thriller filled with “eerie and taut storytelling” (Newsweek). But is her version of what happened the truth…or is there more to the story?
After a deadly incident in deep space, Catherine Wells’s ship lost contact with NASA, and the whole world assumed everyone on board had perished. Miraculously—and mysteriously—Catherine survived, but with little memory of what happened. Despite the horrors she experienced, she was able to navigate home almost a decade after the mission began.
But her homecoming is not exactly what she imagined—not everyone at NASA is thrilled by her miraculous reappearance; her husband has moved on with another woman; and the young daughter she left behind is a resentful teenager she barely recognizes. Catherine is also different after her long and turbulent mission. There are periods of time she can’t account for, and she has haunting, unexplainable flashbacks of communicating with others... Suddenly she can’t trust any of her memories from space. How did her crewmates die. How and why did she survive? And was she ever truly alone up there?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this tense, character-driven debut, an astronaut's miraculous return to Earth after an interstellar mission gone awry sparks questions about the disastrous events that left her the voyage's only survivor. As Catherine Wells struggles to reconnect with her family after nine years away, she's haunted by missing memories regarding the mission, occasional blackout episodes, and terrifying violent urges. Her personal life and career spiral out of control. Meanwhile, Cal Morganson, responsible for an upcoming follow-up mission, investigates Catherine, convinced she's hiding something. Together, they must unlock her lost memories to discover what happened to the Sagittarius's crew before tragedy strikes again. By focusing on the emotional impact of Catherine's long absence and inability to return to her old life, and by maintaining ambiguity regarding her psychological stability, Nichols keeps this story relatively down-to-earth, only gradually revealing the truth behind the disaster and Catherine's increasingly unpredictable behavior. The scientific component is kept plausible but light in favor of character drama, interpersonal relationships, and the underlying mystery. The story's overall strength is undermined by insufficient worldbuilding and a rushed final act leading into an open-ended conclusion, but there's still a lot here to appeal to fans of near-future drama.
