Action-jammed, entertaining, and sometimes profound pseudo-history SF despite the pulpy plotting.
In this SF novel, an alien mothership blunders into a historic Soviet space flight, triggering conflicts and mayhem between Russia, America, and the extraterrestrials.
SF authors Bruno and Castle recast the 1960s Cold War with an alien encounter of the unfortunate kind rather than Cubans. A vast mothership carrying an amphibious race (the Vulbathi) materializes in 1961, by chance—or perhaps God’s design; a few Roman Catholic characters ponder this—in the path of Yuri Gagarin’s manned space flight, killing the pioneer cosmonaut. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, assuming American aggression, launches his nuclear arsenal, which the advanced Vulbathi divert but don’t exactly neutralize. A belt of Eastern European countries becomes the “Dead Curtain,” irradiated and strewn with alien refuse and weird aftereffects (shades of Arkady and Boris Strugetsky’s first-contact classic, Roadside Picnic). Three years later, the Vulbathi—known in human slang as “Toads”—sojourn on the moon in an uneasy détente with Soviet, American, and Chinese officials, who covet their superscience and maintain peaceful relations despite the traumatic history and the black market in copied Toad gadgets and arms. Kyle McCoy was a foot soldier in the early Dead Curtain American-Russian-Vulbathi skirmishes who miraculously negotiated a cease-fire. Now, he is prominent in the DAR—not the Daughters of the American Revolution but the Department of Alien Relations. He is invited to an interspecies summit meeting to chart a future. But deadly sabotage, assassination, and terror ensue. Meanwhile, it goes unappreciated that present at the scene is not really Kyle but his ne’er-do-well twin brother, Connor, a junkie, con man, and part-time Hollywood actor, who switched places. Yes, that’s right, and more than one character marvels at this groaning cliché. The authors’ hell-for-leather approach brims with battles, betrayals, and cartoony villains, including a recurring New York City Mafia crime lord (who ultimately gets a more positive evaluation than the statesmen and politicians). President John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Neil Armstrong, and J. Edgar Hoover are among the real-life eminences who show up (seldom in a flattering light), though a sense of nostalgia gets dispelled by the occasional anachronisms in the prose. Still, there are no cellphones or PCs in this diverting roller-coaster ride through what-if time and space.
Action-jammed, entertaining, and sometimes profound pseudo-history SF despite the pulpy plotting.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-949890-61-7
Page Count: 486
Publisher: Aethon Books, LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A huge, churning, relentlessly entertaining melodrama buoyed by confidence that human values will prevail.
A rare, rattling space opera—first of a trilogy, or series, from Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck).
Humanity colonized the solar system out as far as Neptune but then exploration stagnated. Straight-arrow Jim Holden is XO of an ice-hauler swinging between the rings of Saturn and the mining stations of the Belt, the scattered ring of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. His ship's captain, responding to a distress beacon, orders Holden and a shuttle crew to investigate what proves to be a derelict. Holden realizes it's some sort of trap, but an immensely powerful, stealthed warship destroys the ice-hauler, leaving Holden and the shuttle crew the sole survivors. This unthinkable act swiftly brings Earth, with its huge swarms of ships, Mars with its less numerous but modern and powerful navy, and the essentially defenseless Belt to the brink of war. Meanwhile, on the asteroid Ceres, cynical, hard-drinking detective Miller—we don't find out he has other names until the last few pages—receives orders to track down and "rescue"—i.e. kidnap—a girl, Julie Mao, who rebelled against her rich Earth family and built an independent life for herself in the Belt. Julie is nowhere to be found but, as the fighting escalates, Miller discovers that Julie's father knew beforehand that hostilities would occur. Now obsessed, Miller continues to investigate even when he loses his job—and the trail leads towards Holden, the derelict, and what might prove to be a horrifying biological experiment. No great depth of character here, but the adherence to known physical laws—no spaceships zooming around like airplanes—makes the action all the more visceral. And where Corey really excels is in conveying the horror and stupidity of interplanetary war, the sheer vast emptiness of space and the amorality of huge corporations.
A huge, churning, relentlessly entertaining melodrama buoyed by confidence that human values will prevail.Pub Date: June 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-316-12908-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
