…an author’s dislike of their own characters (and reality in general). Throughout the story, the only truly pragmatic character is continuously vilified, even though he’s almost always right. Also… Kalen (Kaylynne?) is just terrible. She’s naive, overtly girlish for a girl who once served in the military, and honestly a blight upon the entire story. Zach was cool, but kind of overeager, kiddish, and overly cooperative for someone who’s supposed to be so jaded toward humanity in general. Hick’s character is poorly defined, and pretty archetypal and boring. Same with Kate. There’s no complexity there, as there’s so little content on her that she’s more obscure than anything else. Like some B-Roll extra. Of course, this is all before taking account of how utterly annoying all the relationship drama is. (Also, every single NASA person is rather obviously dumbed down to make Zach and Kalen seem “smarter” somehow. It’s pretty idiotic and annoying.)
On the bright side, Jeff Hays is on point as always. Ken Pozo to just murders a totally awesome concept.
tl;dr
I would not recommend this book to anyone with a brain that expects some reality in their science fiction. This is the softest Scifi crap I’ve ever listened to. Stick to Heinlein. Kind of difficult to go wrong there.