Dynamic characters headline this exhilarating fusion of action and alien horror.
Alaska becomes a battleground when alien creatures threaten the entire world in Newman and Land’s SF thriller, the first in a series.
U.S. Army soldiers are mum on details while rushing married couple Kai and Jules Bevins to Alaska’s Mendenhall Glacier. The Californian astrobiologists are there to investigate an alien ship that’s been uncovered inside a chasm in the ice. Kai and Jules, who had no choice but to bring along their 11-year-old daughter, Charlie, quickly realize that something has disembarked from the craft. In little time, they and the soldiers are facing off against strange, vicious beings. Elsewhere in Alaska, two state troopers find a seemingly deserted town and bodies that have been left in horrifying conditions. All hope is not lost—an otherworldly artificial intelligence has awakened nine towering warriors who’ve been in stasis for 1,000 years; their purpose is to defend Earth against such threats. But with the extraterrestrial creatures spawning at an alarming rate, it won’t be long before there are no earthlings left to save. Newman and Land waste no time in jump-starting this novel as troopers search for a “wayward delivery van” under Alaska’s heavy snowfall. The story masterfully builds to thrilling moments, such as the arrival of “the Nine.” Intense clashes showcase the Nine’s advanced weaponry (including nanotechnological kaelens that take on various forms) and take nerve-wracking turns (like creatures “slamming parts of themselves against the windows, spiderweb cracks appearing in the moments before the black metallic remnants of the ruined sentinels shattered the glass with violent thrusts”). Once the action decelerates, the authors add layers to the cast, such as the Nine’s gradually returning memories and a secret that Jules keeps from Charlie. It all culminates in a memorable climax that leaves several potential avenues for sequels to take.
Dynamic characters headline this exhilarating fusion of action and alien horror.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9798895656891
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Permuted Press
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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