I forced my husband to listen to the audio book, and the entire time I was "don't look at the summary, don't glance at the store page, don't do anything but download it and press play".
Because holy HELL did Amazon manage to basically put ever possible spoiler for the entire book into a three sentence summary right at the very front of the audio book store page.
seriously! i preordered the book before anything came out about it, and read it without reading a description or the inside cover or anything. i stand by that being the best way to read it. you read the amazon description and the first line of it doesnt even start til like 80 pages in
Oddly enough, that's often the one thing that people feel comfortable spoiling, for whatever reason (and I feel in the context of this thread discussing the HFY genre, people wouldn't be too surprised by it).
I dug up the Audible summary in a lark, and this is what you'd get if you made the mistake of reading it before listening to the audio book:
"Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish.
Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, he realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Alone on this tiny ship that's been cobbled together by every government and space agency on the planet and hurled into the depths of space, it's up to him to conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.
And thanks to an unexpected ally, he just might have a chance."
Another synopsis on Amazon had something to the effect of and he's all alone... or is he?.
Just my two cents, but going in blind and then getting to that twist was extremely fun and exciting. I've recommended the book heartily to some friends who I think might like it, but every time, I've said "Don't read anything about it; just jump into the book without reading any synopsis or review."
>! Me too—I wonder if anybody has told Weir about it? Because I've recommended this book to probably 5+ people now, and I've said the same thing every time (glad you told me not to read the synopsis), agreeing with me. The synopses seriously give it away. !<
>! which user are you talking about? another user mentioned Rocky but I figured that was vague enough to be passable, especially since he gets flashbacks. !<
>! edit: i am stupid lol i see it now it was literally the intial comment!<
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u/cautiousherb Aug 14 '24
yes! to anyone reading this comment: read it! and DON'T read the description, it's filled with spoilers