A compelling and exciting tale with an admirably resourceful hero; a fine SF series starter.
A spaceship captain defies revolutionaries who have seized crucial fuel in this debut SF novel.
The interplanetary spacecraft Ulysses is on an exploration mission, “the scientific journey of a lifetime,” when everything goes sideways. The ship must be resupplied by tankers based on Ceres, the largest object in an asteroid belt, which possesses abundant ice as well as very low gravity, essential for cost-effective resource transfers. It’s a long-planned rendezvous, but now, Ceres Control is inexplicably denying the Ulysses access to refueling tankers, leaving Mission Cmdr. Calvin Scott with a stark dilemma. The ship has enough fuel to extend its elliptical orbit and let Jupiter’s gravity catapult it back to Earth, a long, slow, resource-taxing journey that would end the voyage. Or, if the ship changes course to orbit Ceres, Cal could risk using the fuel they have to reconnoiter and somehow get refueled. As for why Ceres has taken this step, it could be making the first move in declaring independence from the consortium of companies that owns the base, making the inhabitants “among the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in the solar system.” Cal can’t bear the thought of abandoning the mission, so he ignores Ceres’ warning to stay away and conceives a bold plan to grab the colony’s orbiting automated taxi, reach the base, and figure things out from there. His arrival throws the rebels into a tizzy; they had been sure of foiling the Ulysses and making a strong statement to Earth. Helen Donovan, chief of psychology for the base, is familiar with Cal and adamant that the group’s best course is to kill him, but the renegades dither. Meanwhile, Cal is living up to his ship’s namesake by crafting twists, opportunities, and on-the-fly decisions that—with skill and luck—could get the Ulysses under way.
In this first volume of the Wine Dark Deep trilogy, Keith draws on his work creating museum exhibits that simulate space flight for NASA to convincing effect. Fans of hard SF dramas like the TV series The Expanse will enjoy how the crisp, vivid renditions of technology, procedures, and settings are well thought through, providing a lived-in, utterly real world. The smallest maneuvers are brought home with sensory details, as when Cal can feel the Ulysses and the taxi locking together, “the muffled vibration and clunk of the two vehicles’ union transmitted down the long axis of the ship.” Action scenes, too, have cinematic punch, such as a daring maneuver that requires Cal to employ the landscape as a ramp to gain altitude for his escape vehicle. At the same time, Keith also beautifully evokes wonders, from Ceres’ ice volcanoes to space itself: “A perfect bowl of night. Stars in incalculable number shining through luminous sheets of galactic material. A trillion stars. Maybe a trillion upon a trillion other lives out there. Or none.” Characterization, on the other hand, tends to be sketchy, with little or no backstory. For example, Donovan knows Cal from the past, but readers don’t really learn much about this connection except that she considers him dangerous.
A compelling and exciting tale with an admirably resourceful hero; a fine SF series starter.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73510-950-3
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Uphill Downhill Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 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
An adventurous departure for a well-loved romance author.
Moby Dick, but make it queer SF.
“Call me…call me whatever the fuck you like.” This is the first line of Hall’s latest, and you don’t have to have a master’s degree in American Lit to get the reference. Melville’s magnum opus is one of those cultural artifacts that’s embedded itself in the popular consciousness even if only in its most basic form. Hall, however, isn’t messing around in their reimagining of Moby Dick. In this rather long novel, the author is doggedly faithful to the original text—or as faithful as they can be given that this story is narrated by a queer woman, set in the distant future, and takes place in outer space. Like Melville’s Ishmael, Hall’s protagonist signs on with a ship called the Pequod seeking escape from a conservative background. Unlike Melville’s Ishmael, Hall’s protagonist has sexual relationships that are textual rather than subtextual and also pretty hot. The worldbuilding is strong and—as is the case in the most resonant science fiction—disturbingly plausible. This story is set in a time long after Earth has been stripped of its resources. Humans have scattered throughout the solar system and reorganized into Extraction States and Pharma States. The Aphrodite Pharma State owns every part of the narrator’s body that’s been restored or replaced. The Olympus Extraction State owns the Pequod and claims most of its crew’s profits as they brave the storms of Jupiter in search of the massive creatures hunted for the cerebrospinal fluid that fuels human existence. Hall’s breakout book was Boyfriend Material (2020) and, since then, the author has published a number of wildly popular novels that range from contemporary romcom to romantasy. Readers who loved Mortal Follies (2023) or A Lady for a Duke (2022) may not find what they want from Hall here. That said, readers who appreciate a good old-fashioned space yarn will find a lot to like.
An adventurous departure for a well-loved romance author.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781250394958
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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