An enjoyable read with plenty of tension and flashes of humour, but towards the end I felt like I was reading for the sake of finishing the book, rather than because I was hooked.

May wakes up alone on the spaceship she was captaining, way off course and with no memory of what happened or where her crew is. The story felt like a combination of The Martian and Gravity as May struggles to find ways to survive and, somehow, make her way back to Earth.

You do have to suspend your disbelief quite a bit - disaster after disaster befalls May, and then her estranged husband, to the point where you have to wonder how on earth neither has succumbed to despair and plain exhaustion. At times, the humour and witticisms felt a little forced, like the author was trying too hard to replicate the charisma and sarcastic stoicism of Mark Watney from The Martian. I also found the flashbacks difficult to track with the different time hops, despite the fact that these chapters are all referenced with dates. I understand this is part of May's amnesia coming back in disjointed bursts, and to keep the tension and mystery going, but as a reader I struggled to remember what dates corresponded with major life events and overall found it quite confusing.

I really enjoyed the book more than I thought I would from the reviews I read before-hand...

Across the Void is a love story that meets Science fiction and I loved it. I found the book to be slow, to begin with, but about halfway in I could not put it down, but I took my time as I really did not want to finish this book and was really sad once I got to the end hoping for more.

For fans of Games like Mass effect and book's like the Martian, Ready play one, you should enjoy this book I went in not expecting much based on some reviews but found myself wanting more and fell in love with the characters and the story.

Three stars for me which means I liked it, just didn't quite love it. The premise is great: May is awoken from a coma on a spaceship on the way back from the first manned mission to Jupiter's moon Europa.

The rest of the crew is missing. The ship's AI doesn't know what's happened. May can't remember anything since a few weeks before the expedition. The ship is low on power and they're way off course. First it's a battle just to stay alive and then... how is she going to get back home?

On Earth ex and NASA scientist Stephen would do anything for May - but even he doesn't realise at first just how many obstacles are in the way of getting her home.

I really like SF in which the main character is thrust into a nearly impossible to survive situation and has to get by on their wits alone but it's tough to make it believeable (or suspend-your-belief-y) and I'm not 100% sure this book always managed. After about 20 near-death situations in a row I just wondered if they really would've made it in one piece to well, anywhere really.

At the same time, there's a flashback timeline going on revealing piece by piece the true state of May and Stephen's relationship. This didn't add a lot for me. Amnesia plots (May can't remember why they have separated) are akin to misunderstand plots for me - a superficial way for authors to create tension. I'd rather her know and deal with her issues from the outset than dole it out to the audience a bit at a time.

All that in mind, I did enjoy the book and eagerly sped through the pages to find out May's fate. I'd watch the movie if there ever was one. The twists and turns that keep coming keep you engaged. I liked it. Just didn't quite love it. However it might be right up another SF fan's alley.

Across the Void is a mash-up of both Gravity and The Martian, borrowing liberally from the plots of both films. May commanded a pioneering mission to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, but when she wakes up alone on a foundering spaceship, she believes the rest of the crew to be dead. Suffering from short-term amnesia, she can't remember what led her to this point, or why she has filed for divorce from her husband, Stephen, who is manning the NASA computers back on Earth. As May tries to get the spaceship back on course, she begins to suspect that there's more to her situation than simple human error.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Across the Void is one of the worst books I've read in recent years, combining a large number of sins in one volume. It promises a diverse and fresh take on the lost-in-space story with its beautiful cover featuring a black female astronaut, but doesn't deliver. May's race is mentioned a couple of times, but does not feel in any way integral to her character. In terms of gender, what starts off as a display of May's intelligence and skill devolves by the end of the novel into a damsel-in-distress rescue mission, as Stephen and May's ex, Ian, team up to save her. This is made even more egregious after May discovers she is pregnant, which is a totally unnecessary addition. Moreover, May's characterisation veers too close to 'kick-ass' for my liking - there are no other significant female characters in the novel apart from May's dead mother, and May comes off as a 'not like other girls' action heroine rather than a real person. While the writer is anonymous, I'm 95% certain this was written by a white man.

Across the Void also has a ludicrous plot. It ticks along quite nicely for the first third or so, but jumps the shark after May and Stephen discover a conspiracy at the heart of NASA, and becomes particularly absurd in its final chapters. The anonymous writer has apparently worked on screenplays in the past, and it shows - as in Daniel Cole's awful Ragdoll, the scenes are barely imagined, and sometimes read more like directions. Hence, the pacing is totally off, with far too much happening followed by awkward time jumps. This is compounded by the novel's structure, which pointlessly moves back and forward in time, giving us snippets from May's childhood and past career. It becomes particularly confusing because May names the AI in the ship after her mother - Eve - so scenes between May and Eve could be in various time periods. At a line-by-line level, Vaughn's writing, and especially dialogue, is incredibly clunky - it reads like an early amateur draft. The novel is also riddled with more errors than I'd expect at this stage in the process, with particularly bad ones like 'Neal Armstrong' standing out.

Finally, the reasons behind May's plight are both illogical and handled rather immorally. It turns out that one of the crew, Jon, was planted by NASA and ordered to kill the rest of the crew and scuttle the ship if there was a chance they were bringing alien diseases back from Europa. May did fall ill after returning from the moon, so this plan was activated. While I doubt this would actually happen behind the crew's backs, and also think there would be less extreme counter-measures, the basic rationale behind this seems sound - why risk billions of lives for the sake of a handful of people? However, May treats Jon as if he has senselessly murdered her crew, torturing him to give up his story, then letting him die in unimaginable pain. I found this scene horrific - torture isn't OK because the 'good guys' are using it, and Jon was only a pawn in this plan. This all becomes even sillier when there's no follow-up re May's illness.

END SPOILERS

This novel is supposed to be the next 'The Martian', but it actually misses what made Andy Weir's original novel so refreshing - that the enemy is space, rather than other people, and everyone is working together to get Mark Watney home. A depressing, illogical book that I recommend avoiding. 1.5 stars.

I will post my review on social media sites nearer publication date.

This sounded really good and wanted to enjoy this more than I did. The premise sounded like my thing completely but sadly I couldn’t connect with the characters, didn’t seem enough to hold my interest and the pacing had issues. Was so promising but sadly not for me

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest review

May is the commander of the most monumental space flight in human history: the first manned expedition to Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Except something has gone terribly wrong. She wakes up alone in a stasis chamber aboard her ship only to discover she’s lost her memory, her crew is missing, and her ship has suffered catastrophic failures. It immediately becomes an intense game of survival, not only against the vast void of space, but against foes a bit closer to home as well.

Sounds amazing doesn’t it? And for the most part it was. The first half of the book reminded me of one of my more recent favourites, The Martian, so I was hooked right away. The whole idea of a human trip to Europa is completely fascinating and sparks a lot of wonder in people like me who are enthralled with advancements in space travel.

The dialogue left a lot to be desired, but it was easy enough to overlook this and become an observer aboard the mysterious Hawking II. The ship and mission were captivating, and May was someone you could really believe in as she kept battling for survival in the harshest environment known to man. Luckily, she wasn’t completely alone as the ship’s AI survived the unknown disaster and became a valuable ally. May’s relationship with the ship’s AI became one I fell in love with. Her capacity to problem solve and persevere against overwhelming odds with her new AI sidekick really made me root for May. The dangerous beauty of our universe was also really romantic, adding an incredible backdrop to this fast-paced survival story.

Then toward the end of the book things got pretty complicated. There was so much going on and so many flashbacks to her pre-flight history that I began to get really bogged down with it all. It suddenly became The Notebook/ The Da Vinci Code in Space and felt really rushed, as if the author was trying to cram as many plots as possible into the remaining pages. I think a lot of it could have been left out because at its core, this is an incredible story that is really well written.

***SPOILERS*** For instance, the whole Ian stuff, the baby, her confessing a devastating secret in the middle of her rescue mission… I’m not sure that any of it added anything except anxiety. None of it seemed really plausible. Sure, an Elon Musk character going to save the day did, but his motives, actions, and history with May were just odd. And why would she risk the lives of everyone else just to relieve her conscience? Someone as professional and driven as May could surely see how dangerous that decision would be. And what about the virus? She’s immune but wouldn’t she and everything brought from the ship still be infected? ***SPOILERS***

All in all, I did really enjoy the book even if the second half let it down a bit. Since there were a lot of typos in the second half, I’m hoping that things might get tidied up and worked on before the book is released later this year. I feel like as it is it’s a solid 3.5 but I will err on the side of 4 stars since this is an ARC. Thank you so much to the publishers and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this enthralling ARC.

I love a good adventure story and what’s better than a space adventure? May wakes from cryogenic sleep to find she is the lone survivor of a disaster that has wiped out the crew of her ship. In her desperation to reach ‘ground control’, who believe her to be dead, she discovers that the disaster may not have been an accident. This book is all kinds of fun with a strong cast, a fast paced, twisting plot and plenty of action. I enjoyed it almost as much as The Martian.

I was really looking forward to this book, as sci-fi action is supremely my bag. The story is a rollercoaster of exciting twists and turns, and the characters repeatedly face death in an escalating series of increasingly improbable life-threatening circumstances. It all got a bit too improbable for me. I also found the two main characters very thinly drawn, and their dialogue unrealistic. The story never felt like it was happening to real people and so I struggled to engage with it emotionally. In The Martian we see Mark Watney work through his problems in detail, yet in Across The Void all the characters take ill-thought out leaps of faith that always work out because they are ‘brilliant’. It got repetitive.

If you liked The Martian,then I recommend this book to you.

Across the Void is about May,who is the only survivor on a spaceship and is trying to find her way back home with the help of an A.I. named Eve.

While trying to navigate her way back to Earth and determining what happened to the rest of her crew,she unearths a dark secret. Will May be able to go back home or will her body be left to perish in space ?

This sci-fi story wasn't my cup of tea but I think some will end up liking it . Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC!

Across The Void is highly entertaining with some brilliant characters, Eve especially even though she is not human, this was a novel I devoured in short order enjoying every last moment.

If you enjoyed The Martian I imagine you will love Across The Void. This time its a lone female in peril in space, trapped on a ship that is falling apart with only the A.I. Eve to help her hold things together.

Cue an adventurous twisty tale interspersed with back story and conspiracy as May’s husband determines to bring her home against all odds. Battling earthly elements who just want May gone and living with all the ups and downs of their past relationship Stephen is also a highly engaging character.

There are plenty of edge of the seat moments, but what makes this book is the developing relationship between May and Eve – bringing humour, irony and witty observation to the tale which adds so much to it.

Part Scifi, part love story, part thriller, Across The Void is an outstanding read. Loved it

Highly Recommended.