Nerve-shredding space whodunnitry with a side of existential dread.
Earth’s attempt to colonize Mars meets with sabotage.
If all goes to plan, Officer Gold and her crewmates, Captain Blake and Officer Kang, will be the first humans “to live and die on a planet other than Earth.” After a lengthy “extend-sleep” aboard the Valiant, the shipmates are nearing Mars, where three robots have spent years assembling the mission’s base, dubbed Citadel. Those same robots are supposed to help the Valiant’s landing pod touch down smoothly and in the correct location, but when the time comes, Blake’s radio calls go unanswered. The crew executes a harrowing manual descent, only to discover that something has destroyed Citadel’s lab. Worse, their access codes don’t work on any of Citadel’s doors, and their suits are low on oxygen. Desperate pounding summons a badly damaged Robot Two, who lets them in and then retrieves Robot One from “her” hiding place. It seems all three robots have gendered (and named) themselves during their stint on Mars, in addition to pondering the meaning of life, the nature of death, and the existence of God. Unequipped for coping with such thoughts, Robot Three, aka Alex, went mad, forcing Robot One (Shay) and Robot Two (Wes) to exile him from Citadel. Wes asserts that the damage was Alex’s doing, but Shay believes an alien is responsible and intends further harm. Regardless, something clearly wants to kill them, and returning home isn’t an option. Straddling the line between horror, science fiction, and locked-room mystery, this posthumously published novel from the pseudonymous Coile is lean, mean, and propulsively paced. Although Coile’s characters are hastily sketched and a few of the tale’s more bizarre twists falter under scrutiny, Gold’s terse first-person narration and the claustrophobic setting conspire to amplify the high-stakes plot’s inherent tension.
Nerve-shredding space whodunnitry with a side of existential dread.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780593851630
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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
Let’s hope for more from the next book set in this world.
Sasha Cadell has survived against all odds, holding onto her loved ones and strangers as they take their last breaths—and that’s why she’s known as Death’s Angel.
For six years Sasha has lived in Haven, the underground society built to withstand nuclear war. Since the war, since her family’s deaths, since discovering she doesn’t get sick like everyone else does, Sasha’s life has been full of death and overfull with grief. While working in the Ward, Haven’s limited hospital, she stays with patients as they die. When Tristian Hayes, a unit commander of the Force, ends up as her patient, hanging on for his life, she pleads for him to stay alive. He does—upending her bleak ritual as Death’s Angel. Hoping to forget everything she’s seen and to numb the pain, Sasha leaves the Ward in favor of a role with a pickax, expanding Haven’s tunnels. Tristian, fiercely determined and stunningly stubborn, recruits Sasha to the Force for a vital mission aboveground. The story picks up steam with Sasha’s intense training to become the medic for Tristian’s tightknit unit. Together, they bear the weight of their unit’s survival and all that’s left of humankind. While in training, Sasha struggles to discern friends and enemies, but nothing is as challenging as facing her own demons. In this prequel to her debut novel, Conform (2025), Sullivan tries to accomplish a lot with both the worldbuilding and plot machinations, resulting in a convoluted story and flattened characters. The plot doesn’t have a satisfying payoff, but the romantic tension between Sasha and Tristian will keep readers engaged.
Let’s hope for more from the next book set in this world.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9798217091027
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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