An exciting and thought-provoking thriller.
In Adams’ SF novel, a commander and her crew find an empty space station and a dangerous machine when they respond to a distress call.
The story begins aboard the ship Aurora, where Commander Sarah Mitchell responds to a distress call from Perun, a Russian space station that may be conducting military research. As a solar storm rages, the crew of Aurora dock at Perun, only to discover that the outpost is mysteriously empty. They wander the station searching for any sign of the missing Russians and make a series of troubling discoveries: A terrible smell is lingering in the air, many areas of the station appear to be in complete disrepair, and, most disquieting of all, the communication console appears to have been deliberately destroyed. Meanwhile, tensions begin to rise as Mitchell’s crew battles each other alongside their own demons. Delgado, a Space Force soldier, becomes suddenly violent with Harmon, an engineer and member of the astronaut corps; Kuznetsova (“Kuz”), the flight surgeon and a Ukrainian refugee, tells Mitchell about her past romantic relationship with Reed, their unlikable mission specialist, whose concerning behavior includes him following her onto the mission after their breakup. The group discovers the logs of Perun’s doctor, Marina Volkova, and find that all the other members of the Russian crew died suddenly and under strange circumstances. When they find a barely alive Volkova, she offers only the haunting clue: “Look in the mirror.” Her words may point to a strange machine onboard—a quantum computer. The fast-paced plot is gripping, creative, and undeniably scary. Adams’ graceful prose explores the human condition with skill. (“For decades, going to space had been his dream. Yet beneath it all, hidden under a veneer of wonder and purpose, lurked terror.”) He devotes just as much attention to the well-executed action scenes, delivering a character-driven SF thriller with an appeal that will extend to audiences beyond dedicated fans of the genre.
An exciting and thought-provoking thriller.Pub Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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