The Space Between the Stars
- Author: Anne Corlett
- Published: June 13th, 2017
- Publisher: Berkley
- Ratings: 3/5
Book Synopsis
All Jamie Allenby ever wanted was space. Even though she wasn’t forced to emigrate from Earth, she willingly left the overpopulated, claustrophobic planet. And when a long relationship devolved into silence and suffocating sadness, she found work on a frontier world on the edges of civilization. Then the virus hit…
Now Jamie finds herself dreadfully alone, with all that’s left of the dead…until a garbled message from earth gives her hope that someone from her past might still be alive.
Soon Jamie finds other survivors, and their ragtag group will travel through the vast reaches of space, drawn to the promise of a new beginning on earth. But their dream will pit them against those desperately clinging to the old ways. And Jamie’s own journey home will help her close the distance between who she has become and who she is meant to be…
My thoughts
This story takes place in the future when a supervirus kills 99.9999% of the human population. When Jamie Allenby wakes up to find herself the only survivor in the Soltaire planet she starts panicking but soon gets a signal that gives her hope that she may find someone from her past. Soon after she finds other survivors and they make their way back to earth for a chance to get a new beginning.
This is Anne Corlett’s debut novel and I liked the writing and the premise of the book. We have a group of characters that are interesting but I didn’t feel that I really connected with any of them. The world building was lacking, but that is because I went into this book expecting a lot of sci-fi world building and action and that is not what I got, yes, the beginning of the story takes place in outer space but other than that we really don’t get much explanation on the world or the spaceship used to travel back to earth. What we do get is Jamie, a lot of Jamie. This story is about one woman’s journey to finding herself than it is science-fiction. Don’t get me wrong I really enjoyed this book but reading about self-discovery, survival, family and friendship was not what I was expecting.
Overall, this is a great debut novel, I did enjoy some parts more than others. The story has some potential romance, sexual tension but it’s not the main focus of the story. I recommend this book to fans of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and I will definitively be reading more from Anne Corlett in the future.
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