Brisk, entertaining supernatural romp.
A 13-year-old boy becomes a superpowered defender of planets throughout the universe in Royer’s debut novel, which launches an SF/adventure series.
When a new family moves to his North Carolina neighborhood, Aben Egole meets Nastera Roshen, a girl his age. She wastes no time in showcasing her supernatural abilities by teleporting Aben to planet Zonda. Nastera is there to recruit Aben to the Astroknights, a group that protects planets from foreign invaders. She furthermore activates his dormant powers, which stem from his mother, Marlya, who’s been MIA for nine years. Aben learns that not only is his mother an alien, but that she’s alive and well, safely residing on her home planet. Aben subsequently develops and hones such abilities as telepathy and flight. Soon joined by his father, Col. Ivory Egole, the teenager and his fellow Astroknights embark on missions to help others, confronting winged creatures and more. These missions play a part in creating the universe’s first alliance, the Fortress of Planets. An alliance, however, may not be possible as long as tyrannical Imperial Gen. Warnod and his warships remain a perpetual menace. Consequently, a battle between the Astroknights and Warnod may be unavoidable. Royer begins this novel full-tilt as Nastera introduces herself and then teleports Aben by the very next page. The novel covers a wide range of characters, planets, and subplots, including Astroknights’ training or undergoing specific missions. As such, action scenes are sometimes over too quickly. Nevertheless, myriad abilities are on display, like shape-shifting and invisibility. And while Aben harnesses incredible skills (e.g., creating a vortex), he’s a mostly relatable teen protagonist. He, for example, is not invulnerable, as he doesn’t win every confrontation, and Aben can be impetuous, putting himself at unnecessary risk by going off on his own.
Brisk, entertaining supernatural romp. (dedication, author bio)Pub Date: April 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5447-6218-0
Page Count: 302
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Equal parts biting social commentary and page-turning thriller, a disturbing glimpse into humankind’s possible future.
The first installment of Liu’s Julia Z saga is an SF thriller set in a near-future “post-truth age” where the use of AI and the inundation of digital disinformation and data pollution have blurred the lines between delusion and reality.
Julia—whose immigrant mother, a divisive political activist, was murdered during a border protest—has lived on her own since she was 14. A brilliant hacker now 23, she’s been trying to live in online anonymity, acutely aware of the multitude of ways she can be identified and tracked. Living in a Boston suburb and struggling to make ends meet, she inadvertently becomes entangled with a lawyer named Piers Neri and his search for his artist wife, Elli Krantz—famous for her experimental work in vivid dreaming—who may or may not have been kidnapped. A prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance, Piers goes on the run with the help of Julia—and together, they begin putting together pieces of a mind-bogglingly intricate puzzle that links Elli to a powerful criminal with a global reach. As Julia digs deeper into the appeal of vivid dreaming and the criminal’s ruthless endeavors, she discovers the sham that is the American Dream: “America was corrupt and steeped in sin. The powerful had rigged the game for themselves and turned the country into a panopticon to imprison the rest of us. Anytime one of the powerless—it didn’t matter the color of your skin, the language you spoke, the place you were born in—was on the verge of climbing out, they would be ruthlessly tossed back into the pit.” And amid the backdrop of dealing with unresolved childhood trauma and the need to find her place in the world, she finds something unexpected—herself.
Equal parts biting social commentary and page-turning thriller, a disturbing glimpse into humankind’s possible future.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781668083178
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
An ambitious but plodding space odyssey.
Having survived a disastrous deep space mission in 2038, three asteroid miners plan a return to their abandoned ship to save two colleagues who were left behind.
Though bankrolled through a crooked money laundering scheme, their original project promised to put in place a program to reduce the CO2 levels on Earth, ease global warming, and pave the way for the future. The rescue mission, itself unsanctioned, doesn't have a much better chance of succeeding. All manner of technical mishaps, unplanned-for dangers, and cutthroat competition for the precious resources from the asteroid await the three miners. One of them has cancer. The international community opposes the mission, with China, Russia, and the United States sending questionable "observers" to the new space station that gets built north of the moon for the expedition. And then there is Space Titan Jack Macy, a rogue billionaire threatening to grab the riches. (As one character says, "It's a free universe.") Suarez's basic story is a good one, with tense moments, cool robot surrogates, and virtual reality visions. But too much of the novel consists of long, sometimes bloated stretches of technical description, discussions of newfangled financing for "off-world" projects, and at least one unneeded backstory. So little actually happens that fixing the station's faulty plumbing becomes a significant plot point. For those who want to know everything about "silicon photovoltaics" and "orthostatic intolerance," Suarez's latest SF saga will be right up their alley. But for those itching for less talk and more action, the book's many pages of setup become wearing.
An ambitious but plodding space odyssey.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-18363-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
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