A fiercely intellectual, metaphysical tale that’s often striking, if stylistically uneven.
Jayakumar’s speculative novel forecasts an appalling mid-21st-century Earth, blighted by inequity, fuel exhaustion, and climate change.
In this novel’s future, dictatorships reign in greedy, murderous power blocs, with the exception of the European Union. Arun Jayanth is a Nobel Prize–winning physicist in Tallinn, Estonia—a hub for scientific research—working with his supercollider when he beholds the surprise materialization of the Hindu deity Krishna, who’s soon followed by Jesus and the Buddha. They declare themselves to be “the Collective,” a mass awareness composed of sentient waveforms that coalesced shortly after the Big Bang. The Collective have been guiding evolutionary development of Homo sapiens on Earth, hopefully toward a universally connected, higher level of harmony in the cosmic field called “the Link,” not unlike themselves. But something has gone awry over the past few centuries: Religion, self-determination, and mechanical inventiveness degraded into authoritarian governments, nationalism, consumerism, and a drive for more power. The Collective give Arun enlightenment, as well as supernatural powers involving subatomic transformation, and declare him to be the Collective’s new prophet, tasked with halting humanity’s self-destruction. His human allies include James Garwer, a former U.S. senator turned dissident, targeted by a neo-fascist American government; he has an idea about how to nonviolently rehabilitate social behavior. Arun’s niece Prithvi, meanwhile, joins a covert operation to insinuate social-justice and anti-authoritarian motivations into NeurAmp, a popular recreational brain interface—but could that lead to catastrophe? Jayakumar’s smart SF novel counts off a veritable Alexandrian Library of philosophical quotes, poems, cross-cultural references, and frequently daunting science from the real-life cutting edge of physics and biomedicine: “The 4+1-dimensional Collective formed in this nexus of the formation of the Quark Gluon Plasma or QGP, a phase transition, like superconductivity, will persist for at least tens of billions of years more,” notes Jesus at one point, before characteristically apologizing for getting technical. The prose sometimes delves into satire and even mutates into a scriptlike format. As a result, some readers may find that this utopian science-fantasy-manifesto overreaches mightily—but it will take them on an impressive journey while it lasts.
A fiercely intellectual, metaphysical tale that’s often striking, if stylistically uneven.Pub Date: July 2, 2026
ISBN: 9781970844825
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Mindstir Media
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2026
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
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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