A promising but awkwardly executed speculative thriller.
An enormous space station is under threat in Pollet’s SF thriller.
John Desmond, a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot in the year 2150, loses his beloved wife, Isabella, in a car accident. After three years of feeling lost, John decides to move to the space station Stargraber, a planet-sized hub for the world’s brightest and wealthiest: a launch point for space colonization and a means to find new solar and radiation-based energy sources. After a suspicious explosion on the station, John begins to suspect that someone’s looking to sabotage it. Sharing his suspicions is Victoria Palmers, owner of a mining concession in New Mexico, who’s been tapped to help evaluate Stargraber’s Martian mining equipment. She overhears another concession owner talking about a conspiracy to take Stargraber down, and she knows she has to act. Luckily, Victoria already has an appointment on the station the next day to talk about Martian mining. Her guide, when she arrives, is none other than John. They soon team up to figure out who around them is an ally or a traitor without drawing attention—and put a stop to the plan before it’s too late. Pollet offers some clever one-liners and observations (about motorcycles: “man started on all fours and ended up on two wheels”), as well as some action and moments of tension that some readers will appreciate. The massive space station setting is an intriguing idea with a lot of potential, but the book does little with the concept, instead focusing on a choppy thriller plot. Lengthy descriptions sometimes appear in awkward places and have a deflating effect. Victoria is a competent and intelligent hero, but male characters mainly focus on her attractiveness; meanwhile, characters deemed overweight are perceived as devious, foolish, and suspect.
A promising but awkwardly executed speculative thriller.Pub Date: May 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781967963225
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Equal parts biting social commentary and page-turning thriller, a disturbing glimpse into humankind’s possible future.
The first installment of Liu’s Julia Z saga is an SF thriller set in a near-future “post-truth age” where the use of AI and the inundation of digital disinformation and data pollution have blurred the lines between delusion and reality.
Julia—whose immigrant mother, a divisive political activist, was murdered during a border protest—has lived on her own since she was 14. A brilliant hacker now 23, she’s been trying to live in online anonymity, acutely aware of the multitude of ways she can be identified and tracked. Living in a Boston suburb and struggling to make ends meet, she inadvertently becomes entangled with a lawyer named Piers Neri and his search for his artist wife, Elli Krantz—famous for her experimental work in vivid dreaming—who may or may not have been kidnapped. A prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance, Piers goes on the run with the help of Julia—and together, they begin putting together pieces of a mind-bogglingly intricate puzzle that links Elli to a powerful criminal with a global reach. As Julia digs deeper into the appeal of vivid dreaming and the criminal’s ruthless endeavors, she discovers the sham that is the American Dream: “America was corrupt and steeped in sin. The powerful had rigged the game for themselves and turned the country into a panopticon to imprison the rest of us. Anytime one of the powerless—it didn’t matter the color of your skin, the language you spoke, the place you were born in—was on the verge of climbing out, they would be ruthlessly tossed back into the pit.” And amid the backdrop of dealing with unresolved childhood trauma and the need to find her place in the world, she finds something unexpected—herself.
Equal parts biting social commentary and page-turning thriller, a disturbing glimpse into humankind’s possible future.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781668083178
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
An ambitious but plodding space odyssey.
Having survived a disastrous deep space mission in 2038, three asteroid miners plan a return to their abandoned ship to save two colleagues who were left behind.
Though bankrolled through a crooked money laundering scheme, their original project promised to put in place a program to reduce the CO2 levels on Earth, ease global warming, and pave the way for the future. The rescue mission, itself unsanctioned, doesn't have a much better chance of succeeding. All manner of technical mishaps, unplanned-for dangers, and cutthroat competition for the precious resources from the asteroid await the three miners. One of them has cancer. The international community opposes the mission, with China, Russia, and the United States sending questionable "observers" to the new space station that gets built north of the moon for the expedition. And then there is Space Titan Jack Macy, a rogue billionaire threatening to grab the riches. (As one character says, "It's a free universe.") Suarez's basic story is a good one, with tense moments, cool robot surrogates, and virtual reality visions. But too much of the novel consists of long, sometimes bloated stretches of technical description, discussions of newfangled financing for "off-world" projects, and at least one unneeded backstory. So little actually happens that fixing the station's faulty plumbing becomes a significant plot point. For those who want to know everything about "silicon photovoltaics" and "orthostatic intolerance," Suarez's latest SF saga will be right up their alley. But for those itching for less talk and more action, the book's many pages of setup become wearing.
An ambitious but plodding space odyssey.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-18363-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
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