Across the Void, by SK Vaughan

Astronaut May Knox wakes in the intensive care unit of her ship, her mind foggy and her memory patchy. With no idea what has happened to her crew or how her ship went off course, May has to keep herself alive and her ship functional while she tries to figure it out. The year is 2067 and the ship is returning from a mission to Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. She has the help of the ship’s AI, which she names Eve, but with no means of communicating with NASA she is essentially on her own. There is an awful lot of exposition in the early chapters, which gets a little eye-glazing at times. There are also temporal anomalies; it’s 2067, but we’re still driving petrol cars, smoking cigarettes; and changing surnames at marriage. The action moves back and forth in time, filling in the details of May’s past and her whirlwind relationship with her husband Stephen. In between flashbacks we see May’s resourceful determination to survive. This is tense and interesting until around half way through the book, when the plot starts to get really silly. It moves from decent SF mystery/thriller to full-blown conspiracy theory soap opera with enormous plot holes and inexplicable character motivation. It was a relief to finally be done with this deeply stupid book.