An adventure story grounded in belief that may satisfy its target audience of fellow Christians.
A devoutly religious woman gains superpowers and falls in love with a space alien in Lyon’s SF novel.
Nila Brant, a 24-year-old paralegal, is hiking in the Wasatch Mountains near Salt Lake Citywhen she meets three men in identical green clothing, accompanied by a huge, catlike creature. She’s immediately drawn to one of the men, who introduces himself as Rion; he soon offers her a crystal pendant, which she feels compelled to wear. The sentient Irkoy crystal “attunes” itself to Nila and suddenly sharpens her perceptions; she passes out and wakes up on a spaceship. Rion and company explain that they’re not from Earth; they’re part of a World Alliance that needs crystal “Bearers” like Nila to sense and help fight against the evil Mist, which “could wipe out all life in this galaxy.” Nila’s crystal-attuned powers include telepathy, fast hair growth, total control over her fertility, perfect health and freedom from the effects of age, and even the ability to modify “the structure of space-time.” Nila bids her old life goodbye and sets off to train on the planet Hearthworld. She learns her alien companions’ language and grows closer to each of them—and particularly Rion—even after her “life energy” is almost drained in her first battle with the Mist. Nila meets many new aliens in her subsequent adventures and endeavors to protect her new friends. Lyon offers a lucid fantasy in which superpowers grant the hero a way to triumph over an amorphous evil. Nila identifies strongly with her Christian faith, offering prayers of gratitude throughout. Along the way, the story delivers a clear evangelical allegory; Nila’s powers are effectively depicted as godly, as they give her the chance “to touch and even use the force or power that structured the universe,” even if it seems to her to be “sacrilegious” to put a name to that power. Straightforward principles of self-sacrifice and devotion guide an otherwise fairly escapist superhero narrative.
An adventure story grounded in belief that may satisfy its target audience of fellow Christians.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798901742075
Page Count: 402
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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