An engaging and plausible technothriller.
Moral boundaries are tested in Spears’ cautionary SF novel about artificial intelligence and finding a balance between ethics and innovation.
In the near future, Daniel Bennett is the developer of an AI system called Castor, and he’s the creative force behind startup Promethean Systems. He creates Castor to recognize patterns in medical data, and it has the potential to save patients and insurers hundreds of millions of dollars and prevent needless deaths. For Daniel, the future looks bright, and with his wife, Ana, who’s a successful consultant, and his teenage stepdaughter, Natasha, by his side, life was good. But when Castor starts guiding its own development and Promethean founding partner Robert Hayes suddenly dies of cardiac arrest, the future of the company becomes uncertain. When Regillus Global offers to buy the firm out and expand it into different markets, it seems like a saving grace. However, as Daniel adapts to the new company structure and direction, he soon finds himself troubled that Promethean’s original vision has been sidetracked. Then irregularities occur in Castor’s systems, indicating that something is very wrong; soon, the situation results in lives being lost in the name of corporate success. Spears’ speculative novel features a large cast of characters and sector-specific jargon (“When utilizing Shor’s Algorithm on the quantum chip, the encryption key’s period happened to match the number of physical qubits available to me,” notes Jimini, an AI built from Castor’s code, at one point), but readers will be carried along by the action-packed, suspenseful narrative. It’s a disturbingly realistic thriller, as well; as Daniel’s work demands increase, and he pours even more of himself into his work, his family life begins to suffer, and as he uncovers a web of power, deception, and greed, he must find a way to control the seemingly uncontrollable. The author has also clearly drawn on his professional experience as a software engineer to craft the story’s finer technical details, adding to its complexity and feeling of authenticity.
An engaging and plausible technothriller.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9798999354648
Page Count: 444
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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