An atmospheric cryptid thriller whose wild ideas outweigh its flaws.
A researcher’s lifelong obsession with the Loch Ness Monster uncovers deep mysteries in Fulton’s thriller.
While sitting on the shore of Loch Ness, listening to her grandfather’s stories of the beast said to sleep beneath its waves, young Skye MacDougall sees the impossible: a massive, glimmering shape moving through the water. This brush with the inexplicable defines her—she channels her fascination into a restless pursuit of knowledge anchored in the scientific method while feeling drawn to what “could exist beyond the accepted boundaries of our understanding.” Earning a doctorate degree in cryptozoology, she builds a career in the field. When a fisherman captures startling new footage of the Loch Ness creature and reports an electrical, metallic smell in the air, Skye sees an opportunity to solve the mysteries that have haunted her since childhood. She assembles a small research team including a geologist, a marine biologist, a documentary filmmaker, and, perhaps most surprisingly, a physicist to investigate the depths. What begins as a disciplined expedition soon dives into the extraordinary—abnormal readings lead the team to a hidden cave system festooned with ancient symbols and alive with bioluminescent organisms. There, amid impossible architecture and shifting temporal distortions, Skye confronts mysteries that go far beyond the loch and perhaps beyond science’s reach. Fulton’s novel aims high, blending scientific realism with cosmic speculation. The early chapters are procedural but never dull and so rooted in observable facts that the later drift into the paranormal feels startlingly earned. But as the scope widens, the story begins to outpace its own foundations, leaving behind the modest mud and mists of the Highlands for multiversal theorizing, feeling less anchored in the world the author built so carefully. Yet even when the story overreaches, there’s real excitement and integrity in its ambition, though it never quite recaptures the quiet wonder of that child on the loch with her grandfather.
An atmospheric cryptid thriller whose wild ideas outweigh its flaws.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798264013171
Page Count: 125
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2025
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
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.
A disturbing household secret has far-reaching consequences in this dark, unusual ghost story.
Mallory Quinn, fresh out of rehab and recovering from a recent tragedy, has taken a job as a nanny for an affluent couple living in the upscale suburb of Spring Brook, New Jersey, when a series of strange events start to make her (and her employers) question her own sanity. Teddy, the precocious and shy 5-year-old boy she's charged with watching, seems to be haunted by a ghost who channels his body to draw pictures that are far too complex and well formed for such a young child. At first, these drawings are rather typical: rabbits, hot air balloons, trees. But then the illustrations take a dark turn, showcasing the details of a gruesome murder; the inclusion of the drawings, which start out as stick figures and grow increasingly more disturbing and sophisticated, brings the reader right into the story. With the help of an attractive young gardener and a psychic neighbor and using only the drawings as clues, Mallory must solve the mystery of the house's grizzly past before it's too late. Rekulak does a great job with character development: Mallory, who narrates in the first person, has an engaging voice; the Maxwells' slightly overbearing parenting style and passive-aggressive quips feel very familiar; and Teddy is so three-dimensional that he sometimes feels like a real child.
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-81934-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
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