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
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
A disarmingly heartfelt space adventure that dares to suggest genocide might be a bad business.
When a bunch of corporate assholes mark their planet for destruction, a garage band of colonists must defend their home world with the power of rock.
Slightly sidestepping his frenetic litRPG—literary role-playing game—doorstoppers, here Dinniman takes on capitalism, propaganda, xenophobia, and violence as entertainment. Thankfully for readers, it’s all wrapped in the usual profane, adolescent humor, and SF readers will have a ball. A couple of hundred years after they left Earth, the inhabitants of the interstellar colony of New Sonora weren’t expecting much in the way of new threats, especially after a mysterious illness killed almost everyone between the ages of 30 and 60. That disaster left only the young and the old on the populated planet, where farming is enabled by highly accelerated AI and people are generally cool with each other. But when drummer Oliver Lewis stumbles across a foul-mouthed killer mech piloted by a child, he realizes that something’s definitely fishy. Earth, it seems, has classified the New Sonorans as non-human and scheduled their destruction as a paid, five-day combat game. Apex Industries, led by lead mercenary Eli Opel, has reverse-engineered Ender’s Game and is turning loose its players with real bullets and bombs on the population of New Sonora. The resistance is a weird bunch, led by proto-slacker Oliver; his little sister, Lulu; and his ex-girlfriend, documentary filmmaker and burgeoning revolutionary Rosita Zapatero, as well as the other members of Oliver’s band, the Rhythm Mafia. Thankfully, they also have Roger, the last functioning AI on the planet, though Oliver’s grandfather permanently programmed it to nannybot mode as a dying joke. Call the book overlong—the battle scenes often feel like watching someone play a videogame—but the humor and the execution are cutting without being mean and there’s almost always a point.
A disarmingly heartfelt space adventure that dares to suggest genocide might be a bad business.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9780593820308
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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