Space Punk 2: Nightingale’s Song is the sequel to Space Punks, which is at least a very accurate title to the story. I’m a huge fan of Anna Mocikat’s Behind Blue Eyes series and really enjoyed the first of this series.  If I had to describe it, I’d say it’s close to Cowboy Bebop except hewing closer to cyberpunk motifs instead of Western. A bunch of sexy cybernetically augmented mercenaries live on the starship Nephilim, doing odd jobs for their mysterious boss, while being involved in both organized crime as well as politics. Most of humanity was exterminated when Earth was destroyed in ..read more

Seth Dickinson first astounded (and broke the hearts of) readers when they burst onto the scene with their 2015 debut novel, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, a fiery and unapologetic look at imperialism, rebellion and the sacrifices an islander savant must give to reclaim their conquered home. They then followed this up with two sequels, before shifting to sci-fi for their upcoming novel, Exordia.  Much like their fantasy novels, it’s an absolutely fascinating tale, and ponders the psychology of violence, along with the hard choices we make and justify to ourselves. Seth was kind eno ..read more

Exordia—Seth Dickinson’s latest offering to the SF/F gods—begins not with a bang, or a whimper. Instead, it begins with a Michael Crichton quote. “The most likely consequence of contact is absolute terror.” Once you flip through the opening chapters, however, you might start thinking that absolute terror is an odd description of Exordia. Indeed, it begins in a sitcom-esque manner—Anna Sinjari, Kurdish refugee and socially struggling New Yorker, ends up meeting a serpentine alien called Ssrin. Together, they learn about the human experience, with Ssrin watching the likes of Neon Genesis Evang ..read more

In Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire, a mysterious farmer with a dark past has settled in a small frontier village. Kora is as happy as somebody like her can be, tilling the fields, celebrating the farming life wins, and just existing. Then, an Imperial warship arrives and decides to take all their grain. They have nine weeks to harvest, and then they’ll be left to starve—or, they can fight. Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire has incredibly strong Star Wars and Warhammer 40k vibes crossed with a Magnificent Seven story arc, and if the script and delivery had of been a bit (… a fair bi ..read more

The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud is science fiction, but science fiction of the retro kind, a wistful homage to the outlandish bygone tales of a Mars with a breathable atmosphere, stiff and clanking robots, and saucer-shaped spaceships that traverse the planets with all the ease of pulp era sci-fi. The sort of novel that should rightly have a punk suffix tacked on somewhere in its genre label, only there’s nothing that easily applies. Bradbury-punk, perhaps? Now, let’s get full disclosures done at the outset: I’m a big Nathan Ballingrud fan, having been introduced to his work through Ellen Dat ..read more

JCM Berne brings his superhero space opera down to Earth in Return of the Griffin, the second installment in his Hybrid Helix trilogy. As the hybrid son of a human mother and alien il’Drach father, Rohan is born with a range of extraordinary abilities including super strength, toughness, and the power to fly, making him one of the most formidable forces in the known universe. However, Rohan would rather live a peaceful life as a Tow Chief Second Class on the sentient space station, Wistful. Rohan reconsiders his retirement from superhero duties as a crisis on Earth threatens the extinction of ..read more

N.C. Scrimgeour’s debut series, The Waystations Trilogy, is billed as ‘perfect for fans of Mass Effect, The Expanse and Star Wars’ and the first instalment, Those Left Behind is an excellent introduction to this space opera that will please readers who enjoy darker themes in their sci-fi. Coming second in the latest Self Published Sci-Fi Competition, Those Left Behind proves itself to be a strong contender in the realm of modern sci-fi. Those Left Behind starts on New Pallas; a planet of humans that is overwhelmed and on the brink of total collapse. With 50 billion residents, the only hope for ..read more

After being absolutely blown away by Richard Swan’s Reclamation, book one in The Art of War trilogy, I was chomping at the bit to delve back into this brilliant sci-fi space opera universe. The Ascendancy War expands on the spiralling conflict that began in Reclamation, with the provar of The Ascendancy and humanity going head to head, billions being slain in every chapter, a growing larger threat, and the best and worst of humanity heading to the front lines and beyond. If you can say one thing about The Ascendancy War it’s that space opera fans that lean a bit more t ..read more

Fractal Noise is the second book within Christopher Paolini’s Fractalverse, serving as a prequel to 2020’s To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. You don’t need to have read the first book to understand what’s happening in Fractal Noise, as this story is much more scaled down: playing out over a number of days in a single location as opposed to the epic, sweeping scope of …Sea of Stars. If you have read …Sea of Stars, you may recall mention of the ‘Anomaly’ and it is the discovery of this that is the focus of Fractal Noise. The crew of the Adamura, on a survey mission, discovers a 50km wide hole, perfect ..read more

In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. But there are more battlegrounds to wage war on than blasted planetscapes—hearts and minds are just as often at war. And wars for the soul may be the most perilous of all. In Fire Warrior by Simon Spurrier we find ourselves witnessing a war that takes place on multiple fronts: a far away planet in a distant star system, the yawning black void of space itself, within the maddening, labyrinthine corridors of a colossal spaceship, and most riveting of all within the mind and heart of a young alien soldier struggling to discover who he is a ..read more