Valiant humans versus tyrannical aliens, with engaging infusions of romance, comedy, and quantum science.
In this debut SF novel, Mars has been colonized by an unequal alliance of Terrans and ruthless aliens, with an underground human movement taking shape to oppose the extraterrestrials.
Quinn’s series opener envisions the latter part of the 21st century, when Mars colonization has gone forward—but not just by humans. The Gattis entered the solar system and, with superior technology, terraformed the red planet for joint habitability. Officially, the Gattis promote peaceful cooperation alongside Homo sapiens, but they are conquerors by nature. They have an unwholesome habit of cruelly meddling with genetics—their own and other species’—to mutate and sharpen their predator status. In the author’s descriptions, these extraterrestrials run the gamut; some resemble the tentacled invaders of the film Independence Day, and others look almost human. The secret Gatti agenda is to seize Earth once Mars is secured, with the more militant ones calling for human extermination. This has resulted in human-alien clashes on Mars and a deadly “Red Purge” by the Gattis years earlier that quelled resistance by humans, reducing them to a Martian underclass. But a rebel human underground movement with 2,401 members called the Wake plans retaliation. Key members include Don, a resourceful but amnesiac survivor of alien combat, and Shana, a young woman with a medical background whose parents died in the Red Purge. Shana has trouble confessing her ardor for Don. A strange new recruit is Eio, a friendly, rather childlike, bulbous-headed, fourth-dimensional alien (not even made of atoms), stranded on Mars and desperate to return home. If humans can comprehend his superscience, it would give the Wake an advantage. The Eio angle especially makes the narrative an unsteady combination of adult and YA SF, complete with A Wrinkle in Time–esque digression into tesseract cubes; an episode where Shana says nothing worse than “Ouch!” when wounded; and the icky prospect of human romance with the egg-laying Gattis (shades of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ famous character Deja Thoris). Still, the enjoyable saga is well paced, and the closing battles will hold readers’ attention to an ending that deftly opens doors to the sequel. Though Martian geography is used, the locale may as well be Vichy France, Communist-run Poland, or any other setting ripe for occupied-territory intrigue.
Valiant humans versus tyrannical aliens, with engaging infusions of romance, comedy, and quantum science.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73785-641-2
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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