This novel by Anne Corlett is set in a future in which humanity has spread out through the galaxy, setting up colonies on many worlds. Things are ticking along fairly successfully until a virus strikes out from Earth. It has a long incubation period, so all of the colonies are infected before people can do anything about it. It's also horrifically lethal, with a survival rate in the fractions of one percent.
This leaves Jamie Allenby, who has fled to the furthest colony following personal tragedy, alone on a world that used to hold tens of thousands of people. Knowing there is no future in being the sole occupant of an entire planet, she sets out for Earth, crossing vast distances and exploring the various bits of colony that remain on the way.
There's not much in this that means it has to be science fiction. The events in the plot would work just as well with a desert island and colonies in the historical sense. It's mostly about how humanity copes with massive death, and honestly, there's no particularly interesting takes on it. One of the colonies only has male survivors. Guess what happens there. Another has a caste system. It's all been done before, and it's done too briefly to add any new twists.
Jamie is also a bit annoying. She doesn't really have much motivation beyond "get to Earth". Her various companions aren't much better. They're struggling in a horrific scenario to achieve something that might be utterly pointless. This should have been a spin on Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but it doesn't ever dive deep enough into that bleakness to distinguish itself.
It also runs on coincidences. There are a few too many plot elements that I just couldn't believe in. Most annoyingly, the virus? Somehow manages to "burn" people out such that all they leave behind is a pile of dust. This handily skips the issue of being on a planet with twenty thousand corpses, without the massive exothermic output that would be needed, which would coincidentally set fire to the entire planet. The last fifth is decent, but it's probably not worth getting there.
Not recommended.