A brainy and well-told hard-sci fi / first-contact yarn.
In Calvert’s sci-fi novel, an astronaut leads a crew to a rendezvous in space with a large, mysterious object from outside the solar system that’s apparently under intelligent alien control.
Polymath Melody Adams is a brilliant former U.S. Navy pilot who goes on to work as a physicist and science writer. Her ambitions to go into space are thwarted when a competitor, Bernard Antonelli, cheats on a crucial written test and wins the assignment. Melody remains stoic and takes an earthbound sky-watching role, while Bernard enjoys social media stardom as the public face of NASA. Melody is among astronomers watching Pluto when an incredible visitor materializes from deepest space. Nicknamed “Serenity,” it looks like a roughly disk-shaped object with an exhaust plume (definitely not a comet) that maneuvers around planets and makes a seemingly impossible pass at Saturn. Even with Democratic Party pushback and pundits questioning space-exploration budgets, Serenity’s appearance galvanizes a global effort to rendezvous with what must be an alien starship. An advanced Earth spaceship, the Pangaea (which has an international crew), is prepared to intercept. Initially, a lead role falls to Bernard, but fate intervenes to offer the command chair to Melody instead. As the team leaves Earth, various tragedies and strange phenomena ensue. Can the communist guest taikonauts (Chinese astronauts) be trusted? Has Bernard truly mended his ways (“he had done outstanding work as an astronaut”)? Is the U.S. presidential election a threat to the mission? And what exactly is Serenity? The work of Arthur C. Clarke may come to readers’ minds more than once, though the hero herself name-checks sci-fi writer Peter F. Hamilton as the quandaries about how to communicate with a radically nonhuman mind/machine proliferate. As in a Clarke story, solutions are found via cool-headed, solid scientific reasoning (and maybe just a touch of metaphysical philosophy). Longtime genre readers may have navigated these story beats before, but Calvert’s narrative follows a steady and satisfying trajectory.
A brainy and well-told hard-sci fi / first-contact yarn.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9798347020508
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Podium Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 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
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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