A densely plotted and engrossing techno-thriller in which saving humanity from itself proves to be messy and complicated.
Solo presents an immersive, engaging blend of reimagined history and hard SF in this time-hopping finale to a tech-noir trilogy.
The author’s hyperintelligent heroes are trying to find a balance between free will and destiny as this installment opens. At first, the crew—led by operative Nathan Carter, his partner Elena Vasquez, his daughter Jess, and his son Evan—face a seemingly straightforward threat: A race to exploit geothermal energy has loosened Earth’s tectonic plates, which threatens to trigger a planetwide collapse. “Not AI-related,” Nathan determines. “This time, humanity triggered nature.” To avert human extinction, the crew members decide to jump back in time 10,000 years through a black hole, aided by a sophisticated AI named Uni and the technological ability to scan a living brain and imprint its data in a new, 3D-printed brain in an artificial body. The only complication is that “you could wake up as a mentally different person,” Jess cheerfully informs her teammates. “And, if the errors stack up bad, you don’t wake up at all.” Risky or not, these “restorations” offer the only practical way to travel through time, which also requires the team to lobby for help from unknown alien intelligences. The time-travel effort requires a series of pit stops through key historical inflection points—including Zhou dynasty–era China (500 B.C.E.), the Mongol Empire’s rampages (in the year 1241), and the devastation of the Black Death—to see what other opportunities, if any, exist for fending off total catastrophe.
Once the initial premise has been established, the book truly kicks into high gear. Nathan and company’s historic interloping raises complications, notably in difficult choices that continually pop up. One example occurs when Jess and her companion, medic and psychologist Andrej Curalin, must decide how much effort to put into saving the Mycenaean city of Pylos from collapse; Andrej argues that the culture’s iron-fisted government is a sufficient argument against intervention (“You want to help the fascist state survive?”), which earns a stinging rebuke from Jess: “Not the state…the people, maybe,” she suggests. “At least some?” Such questions take on renewed urgency when aliens capture the team members and reveal themselves as self-styled “gardeners” of humanity, as its sinister, bearded spokesman explains: “Chaotic human society develops civilization branches that lead to a dead end. We ensure the dead-end branches are pruned.” It’s a devilish twist, but well in keeping with the Gardeners’ twisted logic. This particular cliffhanger serves as an effective curtain-raiser for a geothermal threat, led by one Alan Dunk, who will draw wry smiles form readers for his resemblance to certain current billionaire bêtes noires. Solo skillfully delivers such stylish nods and winks, and although his dense plotting style requires a high degree of reader investment, aficionados of hard SF will find plenty to savor. The greatest rewards come from the author’s skilled characterization and his accomplished storytelling, which are all any reader will need to take the plunge.
A densely plotted and engrossing techno-thriller in which saving humanity from itself proves to be messy and complicated.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798297708549
Page Count: 386
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
