An ambitious SF thriller with excellent action but a less-successful narrative arc.
Idealistic fugitive Francesca Pieralisi and Cain, her security chief, forge a new path forward in James’ latest thriller series entry.
In these pages, Francesca and Cain fly through a series of new missions, relayed in the same episodic manner as in previous novels. This time around, on top of Earth’s ongoing climate disaster, they must deal with the ramifications of AI facial recognition software, government privatization, and cybernetic technology. Francesca lost her position as the European Seawall Foundation’s Director of Implementation after she was suspected of murdering Wiktoria Kamczyk, the CEO of construction-drone company Niebo Wzrok. She’s since left the planet and is now aboard the Achilles Orbital, situated between Earth and the moon, and she’s struggling with the new shape her life has taken. She’s still heavily invested in the seawall project, which she monitors covertly through a phone app; meanwhile, Cain is having difficulty with no longer being in charge of their missions of mayhem. After accepting two different, badly planned jobs from their longtime associate Lester, Cain approaches a different headhunter named Cody for work. Although the pair’s personal struggles are the backbone of James’ overarching narrative, they take a back seat to each of the individual, episodic missions, to the detriment of the novel as a whole. Still, the author effectively makes it clear that neither Cain nor Francesca fits perfectly into the gun-for-hire lifestyle; for example, although she’s now a wanted criminal, Francesca still wants to help the world. She’s horrified by the dystopian situation that the citizens of Colorado, and the United States at large, are facing. (“We have to help them,” she tells Cain. “Even if they cannot pay us very much, or anything, we cannot leave them like this. We cannot.”) She also wants to make a new cybernetic technology available worldwide to help children in need. As an anthology of action-packed stories, the book’s a rollicking good time that’s genre-savvy while still addressing timely modern issues; as a novel, readers may find it to be less compelling.
An ambitious SF thriller with excellent action but a less-successful narrative arc.Pub Date: May 1, 2026
ISBN: 9798250979009
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: June 10, 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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