An often entertaining but overstuffed series entry.
A robot gains consciousness in Stewart’s interplanetary SF sequel.
For readers who missed Singularity Part 1: The Dale Chronicles (2023), the author provides a primer at the start of this installment before picking up the action on Mars in the year 2055. Roberta (short for Robotic-Perturbational-Arduino), an “advanced android,” is assisting a mission on the red planet; eight Earth astronauts were sent to set up a semipermanent settlement there, and six have died. Things have deteriorated on Earth, where a viral infection has caused all mammals to become sterile. As a result, Mission Control tell Roberta to surgically remove and cryogenically store the reproductive organs of the last two astronauts, when they die, and then eject their bodies into space. After doing so, Roberta must care for their two young daughters. When they return to Earth, she continues to serve as caretaker for the pair, who become known as the “Martian Girls”; meanwhile, she begins to experience emotions for the first time. Roberta learns to accept her feelings, has difficulties raising the human children, and forms new relationships with other robots on Earth, all of which result in some touching scenes. However, this tone doesn’t last long, as the plot barrels forward through several years and one catastrophe after another. After murderous attackers storm Megan’s high school prom, Roberta finds herself on the run before finding an anti-technology commune in the desert. This intriguing predicament, however, doesn’t last long either, as Roberta is soon thrown into a new adventure. There’s plenty of action, but the staging isn’t consistently engaging (“The spiders used their lasers to shoot the drones, but they were too fast to track. The drones could fly quicker and dart around faster than the spiders could target them”). To counteract this, Stewart often relies on onomatopoeia to spice things up (“BOOM! CRASH! The lights in the room flickered. SIZZLE BOOM!”). There are intriguing ideas introduced throughout, but they’re unfortunately left underdeveloped to make way for plot developments.
An often entertaining but overstuffed series entry.Pub Date: March 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798321376270
Page Count: 546
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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