Vessel

March 4, 2019
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. Agent: Jennifer Udden, Barry Goldblatt Literary.

March 1, 2019
Nichols' debut novel is a tense tale of an astronaut's return to Earth after nine years away and her struggles both to rejoin her former life and to solve the mystery of her own survival.Catherine Wells was part of a six-person team, the first humans to land on another planet outside of Earth's solar system. Unfortunately, only she has returned--three years late, long after the whole crew was assumed dead--and she can't explain either her missing team or anything that happened on the planet itself due to amnesia. NASA wants answers, especially because a second mission is scheduled for the same planet, and the determined Cal Morganson is given the job of finding them--either through evidence on the ship or through Catherine. Catherine struggles to remember what happened and to process her trauma, survivor's guilt, and long solitude. Her family welcomes her home, but her little girl is now entering college, and her husband was about to remarry. Catherine's fight to reclaim her life grows harder when she begins experiencing hyperviolent urges and blackouts--and finds herself waking up in restricted areas. After a disastrous brush with attempted self-medication via alcohol, Catherine realizes this isn't a problem she can solve on her own. But can she trust the skeptical and hostile Cal? And even if she can, will NASA's administration accept the truth behind Catherine's missing time and what really happened on the fateful mission? The parallel arcs of Catherine's psychological misery and her painful relationship with her family alongside her struggle with the destructive force inside her make for a suspenseful read--even if the pacing of the resolution seems a little too pat and workmanlike.A strong premise and evocative psychological elements outweigh the story's occasional problems, making this a welcome SF debut.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from April 1, 2019

After nine years, astronaut Capt. Catherine Wells is coming back to Earth, alone, with no memory of what happened to her other four crew members nor any recollection of landing and exploring the planet Trappist1-f, reached through a space-time wormhole. It's been six years since NASA believed that Catherine and all her fellow crew members were killed in an event on the planet's surface. Since her supposed death, husband David and daughter Aimee, now 17, have moved on with their lives, and Catherine discovers that her best friend Maggie has moved in with them, so her homecoming is ambivalent to say the least. After the quarantine period is over, Catherine begins suffering periods of lost time and finding herself in places she should not be. Only one other person, Commander Iris Addy, had previously been through the wormhole to the Trappist-1 system, but she came back mentally unstable and was soon dismissed from NASA. Before her own career and life end in ruins, Catherine needs to find out what is causing her problems and whether Addy's problems and her own might be connected to the Trappist-1 system. VERDICT Sf aficionados will savor this surprising page-turner. The attempt to resolve the personal relationship problems inherent after long separations from friends, spouse, and child is compelling. Highly recommended.--Vicki Gregory, Sch. of Information, Univ. of South Florida, Tampa

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2019
Catherine Wells was part of a NASA mission to another planet, located on the other side of an Einstein-Rosen bridge (otherwise known as a wormhole). Her ship, the Sagittarius, was presumed lost, its crew presumed dead, but, to the shock of the entire world, Catherine appears, years overdue, at home, alone and with no memories of the mission or of what happened to the rest of the crew. As Catherine tries to adjust to the changes she faces at home (her young daughter is now nearing adulthood; her husband has been in a long-term relationship with another woman), she fights to regain her memories and to control her erratic behavior, which includes extended blackouts and the occasional, nearly unstoppable urge to inflict violence upon her colleagues. The author gives readers a lot to think about: What happened to the crew of the Sagittarius? If they are dead, is Catherine responsible? Although the book's title might be a little too on-the-nose, this is a stimulating novel that should appeal to plenty of sf readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)