Family Bookclub Handout - Book Review

Quick Warm-Up

Biggest surprise: When you realize that Ryland was actually forced into the trip and that he was such a coward about it before hand
Funniest scene: Probably Rocky learning sarcasm for the first time
Most stressful moment: When they were exiting that other planets atmosphere and there is a hole in the ship and Rocky sacrifices himself for Ryland it was super stressful reading about it and really worrying how they were going to get out of it

Cool Mind-blowing Too much?
Explain astrophage in one sentence. The coolest made up space bacteria that I wish was real but probably better for humanity it isn’t.

Immediate love or slow burn? Immediate love
Favorite Rocky moment: When Ryland comes back for Rocky after he is stranded and how happy and excited Rocky was to see his friend again - definitely gave me flashes of Theo being that excited when I come home after any time away
Better partner: Rocky or human?

Could you handle the mission? Absolutely not
What would break you first? I’m not sure what would be the actual first thing but when he discovers that the astrophage enemy got into Rylands fuel, I would have not been able to bounce bake with a solution to that one as quickly
Would you make the same choices? I would absolutely choose not to go back to Earth and to definitely go visit the alien planet with my new friend

Grace: hero or not? there were so many moments where he could have given up but he fought the entire time and eventually made sure to despite the choice to go save his friend, he made sure to send back his help to humanity too
Stratt justified? yes, without her the project would not have happened with all the beauracrats getting in the way and the fact that she knew that the whole time and that most likely she will be jailed afterwards but still was giving it her all; also Ryland was the only obvious choice at the end to be included and I agreed with her decision that he had to go regardless of his feelings about it
Did the ending work? it was the ending I wanted to happen so I am happy about it but there were too many variables at the end that could have very easily misaligned to have caused things to go horribly wrong

MVP: Rocky
Most stressful problem: the entire 3rd planet part collecting the enemy to the astrophage sample
Best science moment: the initial lab scenes where no matter what science you are doing there are set steps and tests to perform to see how something works and what its limits are
One thing you’d change: I don’t think I would change anything

Rating (1-5): 5
Recommend? Why or why not? Do you like listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson videos and do you love science? Then you would love this book, otherwise just watch the movie.