A clever, intricate, and low-key SF thriller about a space treasure hunt gone bad.
In this SF mystery, a valuable mining company ship, missing in Saturn’s rings for more than a decade, attracts the attention of an amateur sleuth when one of the craft’s escape pods is recovered with a freshly slain corpse inside.
In Hendrix’s second installment of a series, Alejandro “Al” Detweiler is the proverbial farm boy (the family farm is on the moon) who left for the more adventuresome opportunities in Saturn’s wide-open environment. A culture has risen there via enterprising (and corruptible) humans, mining the precious substance “transactinide.” Though an “Aerospace Guard” on search-and-rescue assignments, Al tends to be present when criminal mischief occurs and he has something of a reputation as a detective. Such is the case with a clue involving a 12-year-old mystery, the enigma of the Deveraux. This was an elite corporate vessel, supposedly carrying a fortune in contraband, that suffered inexplicable guidance malfunction and plunged into the chaos of Saturn’s primary ring and disappeared. Now, a fresh space shipwreck, the Anderson, is found with half of the crew missing—and an escape pod from the Deveraux floating in space nearby. Inside the pod is an Anderson crewman—stabbed to death. Was the Anderson on an unauthorized treasure hunt for the Deveraux and its legendary bonanza? Appointed to assist the investigation, Al probes decade-old secrets, imposters, smugglers, and scoundrels. The hero narrates in a fairly dispassionate style—neo-gumshoe hardboiled stuff is only in trace-element doses (“The System Police had done more than remove everything not bolted down. Forensic technicians had examined this room since I was last here, going through with scraper, lens, and brush”). The setting is one where “gravity reigned throughout the Saturn System, holding all to its will. In some places its touch was light, in others its grip as harsh as frozen stone.” Yet the prose eschews heavy astrophysics jargon. Readers comfortable with crime fiction who have a military/naval/JAG background might feel at home here, more so than typical SF fans. What could dampen their jets, though, is an ambiguous ending (more of a howdunit than a whodunit overall), with loose ends, some nefarious characters offstage, and dark repercussions for Al down the line. Future installments of this smart, engaging, genre-crossing series are planned.
A clever, intricate, and low-key SF thriller about a space treasure hunt gone bad.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9798992565317
Page Count: 362
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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