A Twilight Zone-esque story that, like its setting, is endlessly captivating.
Weber’s fantasy-horror novel follows three characters from different realms who team up to escape a hellish structure with seemingly limitless rooms—and realities.
Princess Anestine, a young woman playing hide-and-seek with her 6-year-old nephew, finds a hiding place in a cupboard in her family’s castle. Jim, meanwhile, is in Seattle for a banking conference, where he wakes up in his hotel room badly hungover. Elsewhere, a woman named Saera, who’s on a holy mission to deliver a valuable artifact to her prioress, gets caught in a storm and seeks shelter in a seemingly abandoned cabin. Before long, all three find themselves in a strange, dreamlike place with endless hallways with doors that lead to spaces that can be as small as a broom closet or large enough to fit an entire village. The trio eventually meet one another and realize that they all desperately want to escape the “House” and its bizarre inhabitants, which include headbanging zombies, an ethereally beautiful queen (who may, in fact, be neither beautiful nor a queen), and hairy “warrior-men,” among others. The unlikely team embarks on a quest to get back to their own homes before they all lose their sanity. Over the course of this page-turner, Weber makes adept use of focused dialogue to keep the story moving along at a brisk pace. The structure, which allows for a plot twist each time a character simply opens a door, works incredibly well, and the tension remains impressively high to the very end. Weber also excels at using diverse sensory descriptors to immerse readers in various situations: “The cool air tickled his face with damp, reminding him suddenly of his Aunt Jane’s old, dank basement in her home near the Oregon coast.” The unpredictable ending will surprise and satisfy those who enjoy labyrinthine narratives.
A Twilight Zone-esque story that, like its setting, is endlessly captivating.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 scrumptiously sinister novel about a couple willing to kill for an inheritance.
Rich people are the predators, until they become the prey, in this novel of psychological suspense.
It’s hard to be rich in Lapena’s knockout contribution to the trending fiction genre that skewers the elite. In the vividly rendered opening pages, readers feel the boat pitch and the wind howl as Ted and Jill Westcott sail out into the Atlantic Ocean with one thing on their minds: pushing Ted’s brother, Greg, overboard so they can inherit his $45 million fortune. The Westcotts, heavily in debt, borrowed from a loan shark, and the repayment is due. Greg’s sailboat, aptly named Fortune Seeker, seems the best place to commit a murder. No body to retrieve, no evidence to prove it was anything but an accident. What seems like the perfect crime turns into anything but when Paul Ramirez, an investigator with the U.S. Coast Guard, sets his sights on proving the Westcotts murdered Greg. Ramirez isn’t the only person who wants the Westcotts to go down. Jill’s wealthy best friend, Lara Donleavy, isn’t thrilled that the inheritance will make Jill richer than her. An acquaintance turned con artist wants to separate the Westcotts from their money, as does the resentful son of the Westcotts’ housecleaner. Then comes the anonymous text message: “I know what you did.” Blackmail threats ensue and Ted and Jill, wallowing in their perceived victimization, begin to suspect everyone in their orbit. Will the Westcotts get away with it or will they be exposed? Their sense of entitlement means they’ll kill again if they have to. This most satisfying novel dissects jealousy, vengefulness, and, for many of the characters, an unstoppable lust for money. The greedy get greedier as the Westcotts are pushed to their limits with enemies and the law at their heels.
A scrumptiously sinister novel about a couple willing to kill for an inheritance.Pub Date: July 28, 2026
ISBN: 9780593832479
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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