Wildly inventive SF with a busy, sometimes-flummoxing plot.
On a future, much-altered Earth, the archived intellect of crusty scientific genius is resurrected to confront various threats.
Raham’s comical SF sequel may confuse newcomers by thrusting together ensemble casts/creatures from his two previous books, A Singular Prophecy(2011) and A Once-Dead Genius in the Kennel of Master Mortice Ambergrand(2018). This installment’s cast includes human paleontologist Ryan Thompson and his lover, Skeets; they are more or less immortal because they fused with powerful “Grovians,” vaguely equine quadruped aliens (secretly inhabiting Earth since the Cretaceous) who spawn and hibernate in structures resembling trees. Returning players are: the digitized mind of grouchy scientist Rudy Goldstein and his guardian AI computer, Mnemosyne, aka “Nessie.” Both are lone remnants of technological human civilization following an apocalyptic asteroid strike. This odd couple had brokered peace between human survivors and the insectlike Jadderbadians, another bizarre alien race colonizing a beleaguered Earth. Now in a fresh caper, both sets of protagonists (plus substantial entourages) become aware of each other in the process of confronting threats. Ito Prime, a clone Grovian with no affection for any other race, is dangerously at large, possessing different bodies while seeking world domination. And the sentient aura/spirit/energy field of Earth, called Gaia, has grown irritated with all these antics and activates a Yellowstone supervolcano to cull the globe’s troublesome residents. Meanwhile, cyborg superhumans on Mars, led by an Australian-accented bloke called Pi, reveal ambitious projects of their own. It’s not unlike a late-career Robert Heinlein or Doris Lessing saga, with reappearing characters and themes, like widespread arrogance among the various species, though Raham’s attitude is quite tongue in cheek. The writer delights in strange ET zoology and reproduction habits, adding his own drawings of fanciful and factual flora and fauna. Unsurprisingly, a tribute to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxyarrives in the mix. Rudy and Nessie outshine the fairly flat Ryan Thompson and his associates, but this eccentric, Stapledonian SF should sate the regulars.
Wildly inventive SF with a busy, sometimes-flummoxing plot. (glossary, author bio)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73269-854-3
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Penstemon Publications
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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