A densely plotted and riveting futuristic thriller.
In this SF debut, native Martians suspect a coverup following a political assassination on their home planet.
By the mid-23rd century, colonized Mars is finally getting its independence. But during a ceremony honoring the red planet, someone assassinates the president of the United Nations Interplanetary Council. Brig. Gen. Keith Brennan of the Protectorate Forces joins the investigation, which quickly identifies the shooter, dead from an apparent suicide. But higher-ups look increasingly dubious, as they subsequently tie a local businessman and his son—two obvious scapegoats—to the assassination. The UNIC puts Mars’ independence on indefinite hold. It further orders Gov. Helena Chu, who was to become Mars’ president, to declare martial law. Meanwhile, pirate attacks on Mars have soared, including an alarmingly successful strike against one of the Protectorate Forces’ elite units. This only exacerbates the planet’s growing civil unrest. Helena, Brennan, and others surmise a conspiracy of some kind that, perhaps, starts with the UNIC. But it’s soon clear anyone questioning the authorities or somehow linked to the assassination will wind up accused, suppressed, or something much more permanent. Fox’s Mars-set series opener is primarily a conspiracy-laden mystery. The narrative centers on a handful of absorbing characters, all with their own stories that connect to the main plot. For example, Cadet Lisa Colt’s peers unfairly disregard her because of her admiral mother, though the military leader often debases Lisa. While the author aptly describes the familiar environment, the characters’ gradual unease and the developing tensions actually propel the gripping story. In the same vein, Fox laces his prose in cynicism: If Brennan “were the beach that was holding back the ocean of corruption,” Helena “was a rock outcropping being eroded away in the breakers. The analogy brought a painful realization, he had always wanted to visit the beaches on Earth.” Much of the tale is unresolved at the end, and a number of uncertain fates will surely leave readers eagerly anticipating the sequel.
A densely plotted and riveting futuristic thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-954344-10-5
Page Count: 537
Publisher: Dawnrunner Press
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A disarmingly heartfelt space adventure that dares to suggest genocide might be a bad business.
When a bunch of corporate assholes mark their planet for destruction, a garage band of colonists must defend their home world with the power of rock.
Slightly sidestepping his frenetic litRPG—literary role-playing game—doorstoppers, here Dinniman takes on capitalism, propaganda, xenophobia, and violence as entertainment. Thankfully for readers, it’s all wrapped in the usual profane, adolescent humor, and SF readers will have a ball. A couple of hundred years after they left Earth, the inhabitants of the interstellar colony of New Sonora weren’t expecting much in the way of new threats, especially after a mysterious illness killed almost everyone between the ages of 30 and 60. That disaster left only the young and the old on the populated planet, where farming is enabled by highly accelerated AI and people are generally cool with each other. But when drummer Oliver Lewis stumbles across a foul-mouthed killer mech piloted by a child, he realizes that something’s definitely fishy. Earth, it seems, has classified the New Sonorans as non-human and scheduled their destruction as a paid, five-day combat game. Apex Industries, led by lead mercenary Eli Opel, has reverse-engineered Ender’s Game and is turning loose its players with real bullets and bombs on the population of New Sonora. The resistance is a weird bunch, led by proto-slacker Oliver; his little sister, Lulu; and his ex-girlfriend, documentary filmmaker and burgeoning revolutionary Rosita Zapatero, as well as the other members of Oliver’s band, the Rhythm Mafia. Thankfully, they also have Roger, the last functioning AI on the planet, though Oliver’s grandfather permanently programmed it to nannybot mode as a dying joke. Call the book overlong—the battle scenes often feel like watching someone play a videogame—but the humor and the execution are cutting without being mean and there’s almost always a point.
A disarmingly heartfelt space adventure that dares to suggest genocide might be a bad business.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9780593820308
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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
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