An imaginative, genre-bending gunslinger tale with a compelling queer protagonist.
After a gunslinging anti-hero winds up in Las Ráfagas—a dying mining town cloaked in the clouds of gas giant Aeolus—she discovers odd disappearances and the shocking truth behind the outpost’s regeneration project in this SF novel.
When a mission gone awry sees a nameless protagonist pursued by the San Juan-Paul Waystation bulls—“law enforcement on the Cygnus Trail”—she is rescued by a kind robot, Maurice, and given temporary shelter with the Vega ranching family. With Tilly—her steed sporting a Faster Than Light engine—needing expensive repairs, she must pick up odd jobs to secure the fuel and money (“rubidium and spoons”) to escape. Assuming the name Gus, the wry gunslinger with a beam-shooting pistol soon learns that lying low won’t be easy in a town where too many things don’t add up: “Strange disappearances. A mining outpost that wasn’t doing any mining.” After a whiskey-fueled night leads to a bar brawl with Aaron Leconte, son of the greedy town administrator Laszlo, Gus becomes enmeshed in Las Ráfagas’ precarious political situation at the powerful Leconte family’s behest. In her new role as deputy marshal, she uncovers snippets of shady dealings that suggest Laszlo is “snatching natives, trying to force down the price of…land and shares” and attempting to drive away the Vega family. In addition to these abuses of power, she learns that the native Deiopeans—“child-sized bipedal spiders”—are at risk of deadly exploitation. Gus must saddle up for a new mission: save Las Ráfagas before being killed by the Leconte family’s militia. In this inventive novel, Raye creates an instantly absorbing world, seamlessly marrying SF technology and Western tropes. The floating mining station has a complex history of colonialism with its subjugated robots, genies, and displaced Indigenous population. As readers gradually uncover the scope of the historical abuses of power alongside Gus—an indelible queer protagonist with her share of vices—her reluctant move from a focus on monetary gain to comradeship with the townsfolk is a deeply satisfying one. Gus and the community’s fight for justice is a reflective allegory for contemporary times.
An imaginative, genre-bending gunslinger tale with a compelling queer protagonist.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781963029109
Page Count: 411
Publisher: Alex Parker Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A huge, churning, relentlessly entertaining melodrama buoyed by confidence that human values will prevail.
A rare, rattling space opera—first of a trilogy, or series, from Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck).
Humanity colonized the solar system out as far as Neptune but then exploration stagnated. Straight-arrow Jim Holden is XO of an ice-hauler swinging between the rings of Saturn and the mining stations of the Belt, the scattered ring of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. His ship's captain, responding to a distress beacon, orders Holden and a shuttle crew to investigate what proves to be a derelict. Holden realizes it's some sort of trap, but an immensely powerful, stealthed warship destroys the ice-hauler, leaving Holden and the shuttle crew the sole survivors. This unthinkable act swiftly brings Earth, with its huge swarms of ships, Mars with its less numerous but modern and powerful navy, and the essentially defenseless Belt to the brink of war. Meanwhile, on the asteroid Ceres, cynical, hard-drinking detective Miller—we don't find out he has other names until the last few pages—receives orders to track down and "rescue"—i.e. kidnap—a girl, Julie Mao, who rebelled against her rich Earth family and built an independent life for herself in the Belt. Julie is nowhere to be found but, as the fighting escalates, Miller discovers that Julie's father knew beforehand that hostilities would occur. Now obsessed, Miller continues to investigate even when he loses his job—and the trail leads towards Holden, the derelict, and what might prove to be a horrifying biological experiment. No great depth of character here, but the adherence to known physical laws—no spaceships zooming around like airplanes—makes the action all the more visceral. And where Corey really excels is in conveying the horror and stupidity of interplanetary war, the sheer vast emptiness of space and the amorality of huge corporations.
A huge, churning, relentlessly entertaining melodrama buoyed by confidence that human values will prevail.Pub Date: June 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-316-12908-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
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