Another diverting, worthwhile venture into a fascinating realm of discord and astonishing technology.
In this third installment of Aibo’s SF series, survivors in a devastated post-war realm pursue one another through portals and across worlds.
A mysterious event known as the Great Re-frag ended the war in the Griddish Realm. The war was a conflict between Griddish’s ruling Engineers and the ultimately victorious Slaves (essentially the working class). Now, Mechanic Class Slave Rive Amber is the realm’s leader; her top priority, it seems, is getting information about the metallic, crab-like Vérkatros transportation machine (called Blinky) at the center of the Great Re-frag. How did Blinky get such power? It was granted by another Mechanic Class Slave, Cythiria Crenshaw— or so Rive believes. She sends Mora Thrembroke, a combat-trained Bestiar Class Slave, to track down Cythiria. Meanwhile, Blinky manages to reunite with his old friend Cythiria and communicates the only way he knows how: printing out a numerical code. The code is likely a reference to the mysterious and apparently significant One, a person who, Cythiria guesses, is on planet Var 7 (aka Farth), where she was once stranded. She can head back there via a Slipshot Silo portal, though most of these are either damaged or closed entirely. With Mora hot on Cythiria’s trail, Rive complicates matters further by seeking additional help from Matere Songgaard; he’s the Engineer who created both Vars 7 and 8 (the latter, aka Earth, is where he currently resides). The Slipshot Silo-traversing chase soon includes Blinky, who stumbles upon an ally and hopes once again to reconnect with Cythiria, though he’s just one of quite a few looking for her.
The returning cast of Aibo’s ongoing series continues to shine. Cythiria, a former Bestiar, is perpetually tormented; she has “broken” memories of Farth and, in this novel, practically clings to her close, reliable friend Judith Merlon. Other notable characters include the dour Mora, who detests Cythiria (as she’s apparently Rive’s favorite), and Cythiria’s loving adoptive parents on Farth. There’s some evolution evident among the series regulars, especially regarding Cythiria and Blinky’s relationship. Griddish is shrouded in mystery; Engineers first constructed the Vérkatrae so long ago that no one knows much about them. Similarly, the Great Re-frag is a head-scratching enigma, and how exactly the Slipshot Silos work isn’t known. The uncertainty makes for a tense narrative, as the characters are never sure if they can depend on certain tech, Silos, planets/realms, or even people. Throughout the novel, the author deftly sets the mood, whether in action scenes or quieter moments: “She looked up, glimpsing the gentle yet bright glow of the planetary ring, whose edges glimmered from the light of the setting parent star, now long out of sight below the horizon of its turning host.” Notwithstanding this installment’s solid conclusion, the final pages suggest the series isn’t over—lingering questions about various cast members and plot points will have readers clamoring for a fourth volume. Kirillova and Choi illustrate, and the text includes images from earlier artists Sunada-Wong and Juarez; they all deliver character profiles along with full-color, sometimes double-page-spread artwork.
Another diverting, worthwhile venture into a fascinating realm of discord and astonishing technology.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9798987084564
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Mint Cookie Industries
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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