A lighter SF adventure featuring a likeable “average guy” hero readers will want to spend time with.
Murrell’s SF novel follows a newly commissioned officer in an elite military organization known as The Astro Alliance.
In the far-off future year of 4021, Joe Odoemene is on the eve of his graduation from “The Academy,” a training school for soldiers joining the Astro Alliance. The mood is celebratory, as the Alliance is a mere five weeks from a tenuous peace accord with the Camelons, a faction with whom they’ve been warring since before any of the new recruits can remember. Joe is thrilled about his first assignment: He will pilot the Falcon Luck, a respectable ship whose main tasks are to discover and catalogue useful rare elements from previously unexplored planets. Joe is all too happy to let the other “sapients”—his fellow humanoid Academy graduates—do the dangerous work while he hangs back working on scientific matters. Though Joe is a fairly average recruit, he does manage to break a longstanding record in a training exercise previously held by the highly lauded Capt. Kirpicsiskway. At graduation, Joe learns that Kirpicsiskway has changed his commission. Instead of piloting the Falcon Luck—where he would be with his buddies Billy and Harrison—Joe will serve as the “senior helmssape” of Kirpicsiskway’s own ship, the Crowntrotter. While the commission is surprising and prestigious, Joe soon learns it’s not all it’s cracked up to be; he becomes a glorified errand boy, and an incompetent one at that. It’s an adventure story, though, so this otherwise “average Joe” will soon be put to the test, whether he is ready or not. Murrell deserves credit for focusing on a “normal” hero who is decidedly not elite, and his rendering of an employee with a difficult boss will feel relatable to anyone who has spent time in an office: “The captain didn’t have his usual smile. Joe’s stomach tumbled and grumbled. He took slow steps toward the office, as if they could do anything to delay the inevitable.” Readers looking for “hard” SF may wish to keep searching, but those angling for a futuristic take on an ordinary-person-thrust-into-extraordinary-circumstances narrative will happily follow Joe Odoemene to the far reaches of the galaxy.
A lighter SF adventure featuring a likeable “average guy” hero readers will want to spend time with.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798302438775
Page Count: 503
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Buckle up—fans of page-turning SF may find themselves binge-reading this novel in one butt-numbing marathon session.
Like a truck with no brakes speeding down a steep mountain road, Islington’s latest is an adrenaline-fueled SF thrill ride that follows a biomechanically enhanced assassin as he tries to understand his mysterious origins.
The chaotic opening scene gives readers a clear indication of what they’re in for: Contract killer Azure, attempting to complete a mission, is involved in a life-or-death battle with a multieyed biomachine called an Argos. “The thing’s bipedal but has six gorilla-like arms that end in half-metre-long claws,” he complains. After Azure barely dispatches the monster and kills his target, his AI assistant, Atti, informs him of his next job: protecting an elderly—and incredibly rich—woman living in a sprawling underground bunker in the middle of nowhere. “Old Woman,” as Azure calls her, isn’t forthcoming with personal details; all Azure can suss out is that she may be the target of a powerful organized crime syndicate—the same organization that employs him! Is Azure’s ultimate goal to save her or kill her? Although the worldbuilding could’ve been more comprehensive, Islington’s editing choices are brilliant—he strips away the insignificant narrative content to create a streamlined, action-packed adventure with seemingly one goal: to keep the reader furiously turning pages. The various mysteries—Azure’s murky beginnings, the tragic death of his best friend years earlier, Old Woman’s true identity, etc.—maintain the momentum and intensity. The takeaway here is the narrative potential of the characters as well as the plethora of subjects that could be explored more deeply, like immortality for the rich, cloning, and the potential to create bioengineered nightmares for “security.” Islington leaves the conclusion tantalizingly ambiguous. This novel could be the jumping-off point for a memorable series.
Buckle up—fans of page-turning SF may find themselves binge-reading this novel in one butt-numbing marathon session.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9781668239247
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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