An action-packed page-turner packed with political maneuvering, unusual creatures, and well-drawn characters.
In Whitman’s hard SF sequel, the fragile Union scrambles to put out political fires across the galaxy.
Expeditionary Fleet officer Matt Ryder has been relegated to “chase down pirates” in the Mali system after burning his professional relationship with Adm. Kowal, Commander of the Home Fleet. After a dangerous mission lands him back in Kowal’s path, he’s drawn into a fraught political situation in which his ability to use a mental “experimental link with open frequency” could help the Union, which the Fleet serves, discover who’s behind recent increasingly violent attacks against Union ships. When mysterious human forces invade a new planet and capture a bearlike Ursine alien, the Ursine leaders withdraw their support from the Union, taking their desirable laser technology with them. Meanwhile, Amanda Chester is gently managing fraying relationships between the Union and the Mali system with her superior, Chief of Staff Keith Merker at the United Nations. As representatives of the Union, they attempt to broker immigration quotas at a “Colonial Conference [organized] in the aftermath of the Battle of Kumagai.” With Earth overpopulated and the majority-white Acadia refusing new applications, tensions run high between the savvy Mali president Djeneba Dembele and the paternalist Merker. When the topic of piracy is raised and the Mantiz are implicated, a bargain is struck, but Amanda has to use her mother’s underworld connections and her father’s relationship with the Ursine to make it happen. Matt and Amanda use all the tools in their shared arsenal to try to keep any more lives from being lost as they make plans to recover the captured Ursine and discover the shady forces behind the aforementioned attacks.
Whitman conjures a compelling and creative world that oscillates between hard SF action sequences and a complex political landscape that acknowledges colonial legacies. Despite his technological abilities, outcast hero Matt is almost overshadowed by Dembele’s political adviser, Britt, a former pirate who had “a couple careers” before Mali. Britt’s big personality, stature, and assured abilities in combat make him an affable counterpart. The plot is brisk as it moves between Matt’s and Amanda’s situations, which are thick with intrigue as political double-crosses unfold and alliances are tested. The author sketches the Ursine with skill and humor, with their “braided beard[s]” and voices that sound “like gravel sliding under combat boots” when speaking Earth languages. When Amanda’s father, the slippery Joel Chester, negotiates with Gerent Grzynka, readers learn more about the Ursines’ worldview and customs. They find factory farming “cruel…and unhealthy,” for example, and they place a heavy emphasis on friendship and nature. Whitman supplies only a brief glimpse into their planet, but they are intriguing allies turned potential antagonists who underpin much of the human chaos. Other compelling creatures include the Mantiz and Sarai the Templar, the latter of whom can experience the present and “the coalescing Probable” at once, which proves to be indispensable when she later comes to Matt’s aid. Even Matt’s ship, the Hardlight, has its own distinct personality—another element that helps to make this novel a cinematic experience for the reader.
An action-packed page-turner packed with political maneuvering, unusual creatures, and well-drawn characters.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9798388664181
Page Count: 423
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.
When a freak dust storm brings a manned mission to Mars to an unexpected close, an astronaut who is left behind fights to stay alive. This is the first novel from software engineer Weir.
One minute, astronaut Mark Watney was with his crew, struggling to make it out of a deadly Martian dust storm and back to the ship, currently in orbit over Mars. The next minute, he was gone, blown away, with an antenna sticking out of his side. The crew knew he'd lost pressure in his suit, and they'd seen his biosigns go flat. In grave danger themselves, they made an agonizing but logical decision: Figuring Mark was dead, they took off and headed back to Earth. As it happens, though, due to a bizarre chain of events, Mark is very much alive. He wakes up some time later to find himself stranded on Mars with a limited supply of food and no way to communicate with Earth or his fellow astronauts. Luckily, Mark is a botanist as well as an astronaut. So, armed with a few potatoes, he becomes Mars' first ever farmer. From there, Mark must overcome a series of increasingly tricky mental, physical and technical challenges just to stay alive, until finally, he realizes there is just a glimmer of hope that he may actually be rescued. Weir displays a virtuosic ability to write about highly technical situations without leaving readers far behind. The result is a story that is as plausible as it is compelling. The author imbues Mark with a sharp sense of humor, which cuts the tension, sometimes a little too much—some readers may be laughing when they should be on the edges of their seats. As for Mark’s verbal style, the modern dialogue at times undermines the futuristic setting. In fact, people in the book seem not only to talk the way we do now, they also use the same technology (cellphones, computers with keyboards). This makes the story feel like it's set in an alternate present, where the only difference is that humans are sending manned flights to Mars. Still, the author’s ingenuity in finding new scrapes to put Mark in, not to mention the ingenuity in finding ways out of said scrapes, is impressive.
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3902-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
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