A romance-light space adventure that still has plenty to please readers.
A hacker is determined to stop a person trying to incite war between two galactic empires.
Kee Ildez is a legendary hacker and an integral part of the crew of the spaceship Starlight’s Shadow. The crew's human ex-soldiers served together in the war against the Valoffs and now work across the galaxy as bounty hunters. Kee has one goal: Find Commodore Frank Morten, the man who betrayed them during the war, and bring him to justice. She suspects Morten is trying to rekindle war between the Federated Human Planets and the Valovian Empire by staging an incident on Bastion, a remote space station. Kee arranges to leave the Starlight’s Shadow crew behind for a few weeks to run a solo investigation on Bastion—which will also give her a much-needed break from Varro Runkow, a Valovian munitions expert and telekinetic who recently joined the group. Kee is wildly attracted to Varro, but he has made it clear there can be no future between them. When Varro discovers she’s alone on Bastion, he leaves the ship, determined to protect her. As Kee and Varro hack into Bastion’s systems, they conclude that Morten might cause trouble at a high-profile fashion exhibition featuring human and Valovian designers. Kee and Varro’s adventures on the space station are full of action and intrigue. They make a good team, but their romance is underdeveloped and more of an afterthought than a well-integrated part of the plot. Of note: Kee’s staunch defense of why she continues to fight evil, even against what seems like impossible odds, is clearly meant to bolster readers who might feel overwhelmed in the face of Earth’s many problems. It’s a cogent reminder of why readers are drawn to speculative fiction in the first place.
A romance-light space adventure that still has plenty to please readers.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06305106-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
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
An intriguing romantasy melds inventive worldbuilding with a classic fairy-tale plot.
A woman sent to kill a magical beast in the forest instead meets a mythical king.
A year ago, Riela saved her village from a flood with magic she didn’t know she possessed. Now there are reports that a beast has attacked a hunter in the magical Forsaken Forest, and her neighbors insist she must fight the monster, even though she has little control over her magic. Riela realizes she’s likely to be killed, but she's saved by a powerful mage who transports her to his enchanted castle. Garrick is an Etheri, a member of a race of immortal mages who Riela thought were only a story; he's the king of the Silver Court, but a longstanding feud with Feylan, the king of the Blood Court, has trapped him on this plane of existence for 100 years, unable to reach his people in the Etheri realm of Lohka. Garrick tells Riela she's going to have to stay with him since the forest traps any magical being who enters. Riela and Garrick’s uneasy alliance is fueled by guarded suspicion and strong attraction. Garrick suspects Riela's a spy because of her powerful magic, and can’t understand why she doesn’t recognize him. Riela is afraid of Garrick's power and doesn't know if he's telling the truth about the forest. As they're trapped together, Garrick comes to realize how rare and dangerous Riela's magic is, and decides to help her learn to use it. This is Mihalik’s first romantasy after a string of well-regarded SF romances; it has rich, lush worldbuilding, especially once Garrick and Riela start to explore the secrets of her magic. Watching these guarded, wary characters learn to trust each other makes for an entertaining and compelling romance. The book is the first in a series and ends with a cliffhanger, with Garrick and Riela on the precipice of a new adventure.
An intriguing romantasy melds inventive worldbuilding with a classic fairy-tale plot.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9780063411586
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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