Complicated intrigues under the sea—no simple beach read.
In McHargue’s YA sci-fi novel, a century after an apocalyptic event, a struggling survivor of the catastrophe finds herself conscripted by a high-tech maritime military academy complex.
It’s the year 2183, exactly 100 years after the “Halt” (also called the “Pause”), a disaster in which the planet Earth ceased to rotate. Among the ensuing catastrophes was global flooding, which wiped out most of human civilization. Ing is a teenage girl living in a subsistence-level village populated by scattered survivors. Choosing mates at age 15 is not uncommon now as the human race, with lifespans cut short by environmental hardships and disease, desperately tries to repopulate. But Ing wants to be a “Swimmer,” a member of the male-only order that carries out rituals of burying the community’s dead at sea. Her dying father has trained her in the somewhat taboo art of swimming, and she receives a strange, mystical coin passed down through her family that seems to confirm her destiny as a Swimmer. Ing stumbles onto a seeming impossibility: a high-tech undersea military academy, into which she’s abruptly inducted as a cadet. Ing is trained there “for a lifelong career dedicated to the protection of planet Earth against all enemies, alien or native.” As a surface-dweller, she’s something of an alien herself in the aquatic paramilitary complex, which includes shifty scientists, a quasi-Catholic religious order, a doctor who probably knows more than she’s telling, unsolved disappearances, and, most troublingly, visitations by a gigantic octopus called Calyxar, who may actually be talking to Ing telepathically. Readers primed to expect the umpteenth variation on the standard YA/sci-fi trope of a plucky young hero in a dystopian future triumphing over rigid patriarchy via girl power will be thrown a curve here—the narrative piles on compelling enigmas and builds to a truly cosmic conclusion. Even with a busy plot, an overstuffed cast, and semi-baffling revelations-within-conspiracies, the novel manages to cohere and make sense in the end. The young protagonist discovers sex, though discreetly; the swear words are mostly based on the word flood and its variants.
Complicated intrigues under the sea—no simple beach read.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781945837128
Page Count: 307
Publisher: Strack Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An entertaining and atmospheric, though sometimes clumsy, exploration of the true cost of beauty.
In this retelling of a classic, a drama student’s obsession with beauty leads her down a dark—and possibly deadly—path.
Eighteen-year-old Penny Paxton is beginning her first year at Dorian Drama Academy in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she hopes to follow in her starlet mother’s footsteps—and earn the love that her mother has never seemed to offer. At Dorian, Penny is mentored by Royal Shakespeare Company legend Orlagh Camran, who makes her the compelling offer of a portrait by the Masked Painter, a mysterious artist with the ability to gift his subjects everlasting youth and beauty. But shortly after Penny’s portrait is complete, several of the Masked Painter’s subjects are found murdered. Fearing that she’s made a terrible mistake and may become the next victim, Penny, who’s gay, begins to investigate the murders with the help of an unlikely ally. As she attempts to uncover the truth surrounding the Masked Painter and the murders, she’s forced to reckon with her own toxic obsession with beauty. This chilling, atmospheric novel, inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray, is entertaining and full of twists, though some of the reveals feel contrived and some questions are left unanswered. The plot unravels at a leisurely pace but eventually builds to an action-packed (if somewhat convoluted) conclusion. Most characters are cued white.
An entertaining and atmospheric, though sometimes clumsy, exploration of the true cost of beauty. (content note, author’s note, bonus scene) (Fantasy thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781250346797
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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