This bracing SF series opener delivers thorny jargon and equally challenging and bold cultural ideas.
Centuries after a war and science breakthroughs reconfigured humanity, a space-based, dominant race of gender-fluid elites investigates apocalyptic rumors and cultlike revelations spreading among the masses subsisting on Earth.
Whitlow opens a multivolume SF saga with this mind-stretcher set mainly on a far-future Earth (aka Erdos) about 300 years after a ruinous war that practically redesigned humankind. An advanced race of elites—the “Meritorians”—adopted existence on the moon, Mars (aka Marda), and outer planets. They are (mostly) the benevolent and ultraprogressive masters of the solar system, low gravity, and their own medicine, which altered their physiologies to the point of being a new species. Their very thoughts are interlinked by “cognos,” a descendant of the internet, and they regard unaltered Earth dwellers as aberrant troglodytes. The Meritorians are friendly and collaborative with an upper caste called “Consumers” but have little regard for the peasant masses that teem in underground cities and settlements and still communicate verbally, among other offenses. Now, these low-borns are alarming Meritorians with a cultish movement offering vaguely apocalyptic and seditious pronouncements of an approaching individual/entity called “Javeh.” Surveillance scans prove the validity of Javeh’s beatific visions and whisperings, but Meritorian superscience cannot decipher the code or how the messages are being transmitted. In advance of an important Meritorian conference on Erdos, the terrorism begins. Readers will be tested by a dense, future-speak argot largely (but not entirely) related in the Meritorian vernacular, which replaces all personal pronouns with gender-neutral ones (“Se draws serself up and puts ser weight into the comp suit, which mercifully supports ser as se totters away to the stairs”). The lingo indicates that the main dogma of Meritorian society comprises transgenderism and the overthrow of the “binary fallacy,” which the civilization believes brought humanity to ruin. Readers who can peer past the opaque curtain of the author’s peculiar language will be rewarded by intellectual puzzles and troubling questions, largely unanswered by the open-ended climax. Is Javeh a reactionary rebel mastermind or a wrathful (and transphobic) God who is returning? This is heady stuff for the adventuresome who like SF that does not give up its secrets easily.
This bracing SF series opener delivers thorny jargon and equally challenging and bold cultural ideas. (science fiction)Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7349098-2-1
Page Count: 196
Publisher: James Perry
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2021
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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