An enjoyable romp through space with a sizzling love story at its core.
A hospitality director on an interstellar cruise balances intrigue in deep space with an unexpected reunion in this SF romance.
Life on the Ignisar, an interstellar pleasure cruise ship, is uncomplicated for Sunastara “Sunny” Jeka, just as she prefers. As the ship’s hospitality specialist, she is responsible for ensuring the vessel’s guests have everything they need, from comfortable accommodations to spectacular entertainment. Her personal life is similarly unencumbered as she drifts from one casual encounter to the next, assiduously avoiding any attachments. Sunny enjoys this life for five years, until she encounters the ship’s new languages and customs expert, Frederick Caruthers. Months earlier, they met on Squee, a dating app. Users of Squee use pseudonyms, and they called themselves Phoebe and Joshua. They enjoyed a passionate night together, one that seared itself into Sunny’s memory. She desires Freddie but wants to keep their relationship strictly professional. Freddie proposes a solution to her dilemma: They will remain professional at work, but at night they’ll resume their relationship as Phoebe and Joshua. Sunny and Freddie fall in love, but secrets from their past and a mystery on the Ignisar threaten to put their relationship—and their lives—at risk. Hardy’s latest novel is an appealing second-chance romance with an SF twist that offers irresistible characters and a fast-paced story that deftly balances action and passion. Sunny and Freddie are appealing protagonists whose role-playing as Phoebe and Joshua gives their scenes a lively spark. The author’s worldbuilding is robust as events on the Ignisar unfold over the course of several subplots, including a case of espionage targeting a senator from the planet Tranquis and her family. A rich vein of humor runs through the tale, from the title’s sly nod to Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera to the sharp, quippy prose (“Clever, vicious, brutal, and with no allegiances aside from the all-mighty credit, they were, in Sunny’s opinion, exceptionally bad cruise ship guests”). That said, Freddie is alternately referred to as “Freddie Carruthers” and “Frederick Caruthers.”
An enjoyable romp through space with a sizzling love story at its core.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1648981173
Page Count: 276
Publisher: City Owl Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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