A smart, tender work of hard science fiction.
A queer doctor finds community when his ship captain maroons him on a desert planet.
John Maraintha grew up on Essius, the only human-colonized planet that doesn’t observe the rites of marriage or monogamy. When his ship captain abruptly sends him and a linguist, Sudharma, to the desert planet Scythia, John is not sure he will ever fit in. Both human cultures present on Scythia, the Ischnurans and the Zandaheans, practice marriage, and the Zandaheans—who are by and large conservative Christians—consider John’s bisexuality sinful. They also find themselves at odds with the Ischnurans, who recognize three sexes: male, female, and jess. The sole jess on Scythia, Iren, quickly becomes John’s confidante, as do Piro and Laura, a Zandahean married couple harboring secrets of their own—including a child who wishes to “take the braid” and become a jess. John struggles to find his niche while Piro, Iren, and Sudharma work together to unravel the language of the Scythian natives, known as basket-men. But when Iren discovers a foul betrayal, John’s mission becomes clear. Reed spins a beautiful tapestry of a story here, holding deep conversations about gender, biology, and linguistics. Scythia, with its dryads—mammals, insects, and reptiles that spawn from plants—seems totally alien, and the human cultures that mix in its deserts seem diverse and believable. Most of the characters have brown skin. Iren is asexual, Sudharma is aromantic, and Laura is a lesbian. Additionally, Sudharma is a devout Jain, Piro and his child are devout Christians, and Laura is a “Denier”—a non-Christian Zandahean.
A smart, tender work of hard science fiction.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9781250364739
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A cleverly titled, cozy SF romance that marks Thorne as a writer to watch.
After purchasing a dilapidated, century-old starship called the Destitute, Torian Razner discovers that the moss covering it is, in fact, a deeply sarcastic sentient computer with abandonment issues.
Torian’s sister, Celise, is dying. Determined to save her life by getting her to a distant planet with air she can breathe, Torian ignores her former captain Amelia Perrosk’s warning that it’s an impossible task (along with any romantic feelings she might have for Amelia). Using the only ionite bars she has to her name, Torian purchases an ancient, moss-covered alien starship that appears to be on its last legs, so to speak. She hardly expected the moss to be a sentient computer or for it to hold a century-old grudge against its former alien captain. Moss quickly proves itself to be acerbic, intelligent, and rightly angry after being having been left behind for 100 years by its former captain. The two form a reluctant and surprising alliance, Torian proving to Moss that not all captains are “dog-turd fungus,” and they both gradually evolve into the best versions of themselves, human or otherwise. It’s obvious from the early pages that Thorne has crafted a story tailored to fans of Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot series and Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries. Falling somewhere between the two, this is a delightful mashup of romance, found family, and a touch of violence as Moss grapples with its feelings about its former captain and the unexpected kindness that Torian shows. Sweet without being overly saccharine, it’s a book for readers who want the adventure that comes with the vastness of outer space without its harsher realities.
A cleverly titled, cozy SF romance that marks Thorne as a writer to watch.Pub Date: July 7, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414144
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bramble Books
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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