After his caper novel on the moon, Weir is revisiting the idea of a lone human in space. Here the human is Ryland Grace who wakes up on a ship in space and has no memories of how or why he is there. Bit by bit (very small bits at first) he begins to put the pieces together and as he does so the reader is taken back into his recent past to see what brought him here; alone on a space ship, far from earth, with only a couple of dead crew mates as companions. What Ryland realizes is that he may be humanity's last best hope for survival and that it will be up to him to use his science know-how to do the job he's been assigned.
There are similarities here to Weir's breakout first novel, The Martian. Ryland's self-deprecating humor, his stubborn persistence and his some scientific creativity are certainly reminiscent of Mark Watney in that debut book. But this isn't just The Martian placed further in space. The consequences for The Martian all had to do with Watney's survival. Here it is earth itself that is at risk and that knowledge weighs on Ryland and adds to the stakes. There are other surprises in store for the reader that I won't spoil here, but I'll tell you that I enjoyed them all in this page turner. I've read that the book has already been optioned to be a movie by Ryan Gosling and I cannot wait to see what he does with it.