A fast-paced and fun adventure beyond the stars.
In Gurgu’s SF novel, a team of interstellar outcasts on the run from the Imperium crosses paths with an ancient evil from deep in Earth’s Carpathian Mountains.
Toshi Hunter and the ragtag crew of the spaceship Pandora already have a lot on their plates by the time they first encounter a dead ship full of metamorphic monstrosities tumbling through space. Players of the classic 2008 Dead Space video game will no doubt instantly recognize the kind of gruesome scene Toshi and company find. It would be a galaxy-class understatement to say that it’s the last thing the beleaguered crew needs at this point. They’re tired of being on the run, because the Imperium has branded them, as members of the Free the Galaxy organization, as terrorists. Years of tossing intergalactic monkey wrenches into the Imperium’s never-ending plans to terraform the universe have taken a serious toll on them all, and Toshi himself is pondering retirement. The Imperium’s version of Manifest Destiny, however, is just as mean and genocidal as the 19th-century variety, because it, too, is lethal to indigenous communities, and despite the trials and sacrifices, the Pandora’s crew remains determined to fight it: “Every planet the humans had colonized had been terraformed, its ecosystem destroyed and brought to Earth standards,” notes the third-person narration. “Humanity was like a plague, burning through the galaxy.” It’s true that the politics of Gurgu’s novel couldn’t be more overt. That said, the galloping, guns-blazing nature of the power-packed prose makes this space opera seem more pulpy than political. The text has a tendency toward gruesomeness in places: “Its upper body looked human, but its legs were insectlike and its head was shredded, as though something with huge mandibles had chewed on it.” Overall, the author has a keen knack for mixing and melding SF and the supernatural in all kinds of intriguing ways. Clear allusions to vampirism would be too obvious; Gurgu opts instead for more obscure archetypes: When was the last time one read about a wendigo in outer space?
A fast-paced and fun adventure beyond the stars.Pub Date: April 30, 2026
ISBN: 9781738659388
Page Count: 303
Publisher: Kult Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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