The Effort

Holroyde’s twisty if uneven debut centers on an asteroid’s threat to human life, and a NASA scientist who races against the clock to save the planet. In the near-future, asteroid hunters are stunned to spot a dark comet that’s only discovered when it’s dangerously close to Earth. Ben Schwartz, who heads NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, is tapped by an international group to assemble a team whose impossible mission is to develop a plan to deflect the comet from its path in less than a year. The deadline is too short for one country to build an intercepting spacecraft from scratch, meaning they must win cooperation of other nations’ space programs to accomplish the ambitious goal. With the U.S. led by a Trump-like president, not every country ends up going along, and as the comet gets closer, panic and societal disruptions around the world complicate Schwartz’s work. The prose is sometimes clunky (“Thick spectacles magnified red-veined eyes draped with lids like unfolded origami”), but Holroyde displays a keen vision of societal and diplomatic breakdown amid imminent disaster. The deeper themes about human nature make this apocalyptic thriller more than escapist reading, though the execution could be stronger. (Jan.)