THE QUANTUM MIRROR

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.