A gripping tale that features chilling monsters, an eerie mystery, and intriguing characters.
While searching for her lost boyfriend on Mount Denali, a woman finds something more sinister than she ever imagined in this graphic novel.
Hooky Hidalgo is climbing Mount Denali and livestreaming the experience when he loses his handhold and falls onto a ledge. After assuring the streaming audience that he’s fine, he mentions seeing a cave entrance with weird carvings (“They look majorly ancient”) and then the feed goes dead. Only 33 hours later, Hooky’s girlfriend, Becca Burgos, has made it to Mount Denali to find out what happened to him. With no vacancies available in town, the local cops are surprisingly helpful, finding Becca a place to stay in a rental cabin. But it’s a setup—Becca is meant to be a sacrifice to a large, haunting creature and the locals are hoping her death will keep more people from trying to follow Hooky up the mountain. Escaping the monster, with the help of a local, Shailene Simmons, Becca runs farther up the mountain with her new friend. Shailene has been studying the weird creatures in the area and the Dark Pyramid—a structure inside the mountain—that the government has been keeping quiet for years. Since Becca and Shailene survived the first attack, the military is pulling out all the stops to try to prevent them from uncovering the truth about the Dark Pyramid and what happened to Hooky. And if killing the pair is the easiest way to do that, so be it. While they are battling the military and monsters alike, can Becca and Shailene survive what the Dark Pyramid is throwing at them? In this tense and violent graphic novel, Tobin and Holden have created a captivating world of gods, monsters, and strange, human-faced goats. With a mostly dark color scheme, the striking art fits the vibe of the engrossing tale. Cryptids abound, and the mystery of the Dark Pyramid will appeal to readers who prefer a little mythology and archaeology with their SF. This spooky story, which stars two distinctive female heroes facing terrifying creatures, will also delight horror and cryptozoology fans. While the action-packed tale offers a satisfying conclusion, the final pages set the stage for a sequel.
A gripping tale that features chilling monsters, an eerie mystery, and intriguing characters.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781545820452
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Mad Cave Studios
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 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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