An often lively space romp with touches of comedy and kink.
In an alternate near future, a ferocious young human militia fighter grapples with her desire for her hard-bodied alien comrade in arms in this erotic SF adventure.
Mars continues the seriocomic series Love Wars, which began with Moving Jack (2019). Here, the plot, set in 2025, connects two frenemies from previous volumes. One is soldier Jill, who explains herself in profanity-laden diary entries; they’re set in the context of a contentious relationship between endangered humanity and the Staraban, a species of golden-skinned, twin-hearted alien humanoids. Jill grew up within Make Aliens Dead, a militia/survivalist cult of alien-hating renegades in California’s Pinnacles National Park. Indeed, she’s the daughter of the top MAD man—a brutal leader who calls himself Bulldog. However, she’s joined the Staraban and their diverse human allies, which include supernatural beings such as vampires and people who can shape-shift into animals (particularly bears). Jill’s self-described “defection” earned her a death sentence from her pitiless parent, who moves MAD toward terrorist tactics, including kidnapping and threatening Staraban and humans alike. Jill must return from her deep-space capers to fight MAD, which may mean killing her own father, whom she despises. The spaceship journey puts her in close quarters with Nial, a Staraban warrior with whom she has a lust-hate relationship, and sparks fly. Over the course of this wild novel, readers will quickly get the sense that the prime directive of the series is to present events that intimately pair infinitely diverse characters in infinite combinations. Sinewy Nial treats Jill condescendingly, although she secretly fascinates him, and their erotic relationship effectively results in lots of steamy fan service; one passage, for instance, describes Jill’s thighs as “a masterpiece of muscular definition,” and her genitalia’s scent causes Nial’s mouth to water. In comparison to this lustful relationship, the quasi-military intrigues and raids back on Earth seem rather perfunctory, with a finale that offers readers a literal deus ex machina climax.
An often lively space romp with touches of comedy and kink.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 237
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A cleverly titled, cozy SF romance that marks Thorne as a writer to watch.
After purchasing a dilapidated, century-old starship called the Destitute, Torian Razner discovers that the moss covering it is, in fact, a deeply sarcastic sentient computer with abandonment issues.
Torian’s sister, Celise, is dying. Determined to save her life by getting her to a distant planet with air she can breathe, Torian ignores her former captain Amelia Perrosk’s warning that it’s an impossible task (along with any romantic feelings she might have for Amelia). Using the only ionite bars she has to her name, Torian purchases an ancient, moss-covered alien starship that appears to be on its last legs, so to speak. She hardly expected the moss to be a sentient computer or for it to hold a century-old grudge against its former alien captain. Moss quickly proves itself to be acerbic, intelligent, and rightly angry after being having been left behind for 100 years by its former captain. The two form a reluctant and surprising alliance, Torian proving to Moss that not all captains are “dog-turd fungus,” and they both gradually evolve into the best versions of themselves, human or otherwise. It’s obvious from the early pages that Thorne has crafted a story tailored to fans of Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot series and Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries. Falling somewhere between the two, this is a delightful mashup of romance, found family, and a touch of violence as Moss grapples with its feelings about its former captain and the unexpected kindness that Torian shows. Sweet without being overly saccharine, it’s a book for readers who want the adventure that comes with the vastness of outer space without its harsher realities.
A cleverly titled, cozy SF romance that marks Thorne as a writer to watch.Pub Date: July 7, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414144
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bramble Books
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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