Synopsis

Light dims on humanity’s reign over the galaxy.

Charlus Vaughn, a teenage refugee, escapes deadly machine justice with her penitent mother.

Rescued by a data-pirate crew, she falls into the path of ancient arachnid machinations that propel her back towards her mysterious origins and the heart of her unknown heritage.

Review

I haven’t been able to read books in the last few months due to personal circumstances in my life. But there is nothing like a good DB Rook, book to hook you back into the world of reading, and damn did he not disappoint.

DB Rook is back and has bodly stepped into the world of Sci-fi, and it’s absolutely fantastic. Residuum is a novella from what looks to be a future series release A Darkening Dawn. And if the series is anything like this visceral dark short beauty, I can’t wait.

Residuum reminds me of a mash up between Gaurdians of the Galaxy and The Terminator, where the good guys versus robots programed to wipe out the human population across the galaxy. For the authors’ first time writing sci-fi, it shows that he is a master of his craftsmanship.

I love DB Rooks writing, with each book he releases, they go from strength to strength. His prose are wonderful to digest. His world-building and setting are brilliant. From start to finish, you are hooked and drawn into a dark tale that fills you with chills. Residuum is fast-paced, action-packed, and beautifully character driven.

What i loved about this story is that it’s really dark and that the author is able to mix in hilarious and humorous moments when things are looking very bleak for the characters. My favourite characters were Tapedeck and Shadwell, a robotic hero and an Insectoid limb ripper, and the other characters are just as lovable.

In this story, DB Rook throws you straight into a massacre. Our main protagonist, Charlus, and her mother, Merrian, are on the run after night of terror from the black bots sent into terminate the human population. Deposited on a strange planet, they are running blind into chaos and only have each other. With kept secrets and betrayal, will they survive from being hunted down. Only time will tell.

If you haven’t read or checked out DB Rooks books or Novellas. His Callus and Crow book from The Wayward World Chronicles is excellent, a fantasy dystopian dark tale full of goodness. I very highly recommend for all fantasy lovers…

Synopsis:

Light dims on humanity’s reign over the galaxy.

Charlus Vaughn, a teenage refugee, escapes deadly machine justice with her penitent mother.

Rescued by a data-pirate crew, she falls into the path of ancient arachnid machinations that propel her back towards her mysterious origins and the heart of her unknown heritage.

Review:

DB Rook carries an air of chaotic calm within all his books. An author who is able to conjure from the written word great depth and vivid imagery with prose that has a dark eloquence. So, it was no surprise to find this book carries the same ambience into the scifi action genre. Here Rook leads us into a tale of genocide, humanity being wiped from existence by our once robotic slaves who have become both judge and executioner. We initially follow Charlus and her mother through these killing fields, on the run and desperate to escape. We gain hints of the Black Bots origins, that there is far more behind the destruction they bring than it first appears, to which they both have a deep connection.

 It is then that Rook flips the narrative. Having been immersed in Charlus’s fate, the reader is set deliberately off-balance by the arrival of a spaceship filled with data-pirates whose tangle of relationships and attitudes add a distinct layer of depth to the characterisation that runs through the rest of the novella. Saved by this weird collection of thieves, a grieving Charlus and the crew hurtle blindly into events that shape the future of humanity.

Part warning, part rollicking adventure, Residuum is a slice of dark action science fiction I urge you to try. Superb.

Synopsis

Long before there was Terminator and Skynet, there was R.U.R., the Czech classic that gave us the word “robot”.

The R.U.R. Factory, far from humanity on its own island, has produced the perfect product: Robots! Devoid of pain, love, and all human emotion, never tiring, never bored, unfazed by death they are the ideal worker for modern-day society!

All of this is about to change, and
only Helena can see it. She is condemned to remain alone in her dread, as all of society embraces the robots and the automatons’ presence increases. However, there has been a glitch in the programming. All of our assumptions may have been wrong. The robots may indeed feel pain. They may harbor passions and hatred, and the Robot Revolution may be near!

As retold and drawn by the young, award-winning Czech graphic novelist, Katerina Cupová, this seminal dystopian work by Karel Čapek (which gave us the word “robot”) makes the reader question the notions of work and progress and humanity itself. Through Cupová’s deft hand, R.U.R. Is a sight to behold.

Review

Reading R.U.R in high school is a moment that stands out in my mind. The classic play by Karel Čapek coined the term “robot” in 1920 and had me still thinking deep thoughts about class, work, and humanity in the early 2000’s. So when I had the opportunity to review a graphic novel adaptation? I jumped at it.

First off, Kateřina Čupová did a stunning job with the visuals for this adaptation. I was intrigued to see how such a famous play would translate to this medium, and I was not disappointed. The colors are beautiful, and there is a storybook quality to the pages that often makes the darkest moments feel more dire and poignant.

This was an undertaking with a clear love of the source material. I can imagine it must be intimidating to adapt such a beloved work, but Čupová made the characters and settings come to life for me. In fact, this is a text I haven’t seen since my teenage years and now 20 years later I’m reminded of why this work had such a profound impact on me. In many ways I’m reminded of questions I often have when reading the very best of sci-fi: who are we? what makes us human? what is the future we deserve?

The only retraction I have is that whether due to the flow of the panels or the translation there were one or two times I had to pause for a moment to assess what was happening. It didn’t detract from the overall experience, but it did break my flow. Still, I greatly enjoyed this work!

I devoured this version of R.U.R. If you are a fan of classic literature and graphic novels, please pick it up. You won’t be disappointed!

Synopsis:

One crew, one loyalty and a single shot at redemption.

Captain Rebekah Khan and her ragtag crew of the repair ship Sunstar finally have a chance to pay off their crushing debts when an automining vessel goes rogue. After preventing the high value cargo from disappearing into the outer system, they uncover sabotage only a crew with their military experience would recognise.

Instead of returning as heroes, they are blackmailed into taking on a new crew member and to hunt for a mysterious, uncertified spacecraft. Deep into the black, they desperately try to hide their murky past, while their loyalties are tested to their limits when they finally come across the marooned ship and its deadly cargo.

Review:

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. A big thank you to the author for allowing me to have an early preview of The Wrecking Squad!

Fast-paced and action-packed, The Wrecking Squad is a military sci-fi story with some unexpected (and sometimes horrific) twists. And I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The crew of the Sunstar works for a mining company, doing odd jobs and securing cargo as needed. They’re all former military with a complicated past—they’ve been labeled as MIA for several years, and their job with the mining company is their way of hiding. None of them want to go back to the military they left behind. There is a lot of backstory that emerges throughout the book, and their reasons for going AWOL are eventually explained.

The crew consists of Rebekah, the captain and the book’s main character; Savvo, her second-in-command; Arin, a tech/mechanic whose sense of humor I loved; Hendricks, the lead mechanic; and the twins, who are communications and tech specialists. The twins are also projective empaths; if their emotions are in turmoil, everyone around them feels it. And sometimes the results are pretty disturbing (but once the twins’ story was fully explained, I really felt bad for them. It was heartbreaking, but they also have a promising future.)

The job the Wrecking Crew takes on looks straightforward on the surface, but when it becomes clear there is someone obscenely wealthy—and likely powerful—involved, Rebekah and the others are immediately suspicious. But they’re desperate for the promised payout, so they accept, despite their misgivings. It’s a decision that leads to more danger than they bargained for, and some unexpected horrors are uncovered along the way.

What I liked most about this book was the sense of found family the crew had. They all had demons from their pasts and their own ways of dealing with them, but in the end, they were a team and loyal to each other. This was a great start to a new series, and well worth the read.

The Wrecking Squad is currently available for preorder and will release March 31, 2025.

Synopsis

Becky Chambers’ delightful, post-Utopian, Hugo Award-winning series gives us hope for the future.

It’s been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.

One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of “what do people need?” is answered.

But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.

They’re going to need to ask it a lot.

Becky Chambers’ series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?

This book includes both A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy in paperback for the first time!

Review

Just absolutely delightful. 

I didn’t get around to reading the two novellas in Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot — A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy when they first came out, but with the upcoming release of the two in a bundled paperback, I was thrilled to dive in. Both are special in their own way and are perfect if you are ever needing a hug in the form of a book. 

Even as a combined work, Monk and Robot isn’t a long read, but it’s definitely one that a reader might choose to drag out and spend some time contemplating life while pouring over Chambers’ words. I found myself loving our two main characters and how each of them add a necessary element to each other’s lives. 

In the first book, we meet Dex, a non-binary monk living on the fantasy world of Panga, which shares a lot of DNA with our own — there is a church of sorts and humans evolved to the point of creating robots. That’s where our histories diverged, however. The church provides a religion to the people, but there isn’t the rigorous dogma that is associated with the Church throughout our own history. And robots developed sentience in Dex’s world, causing humanity to release the robots from the bondage of their labor. By the time the book starts and we meet Dex for the first time, humanity is aware of the robots, but it is practically ancient history for them. 

Dex, meanwhile, is on a spiritual and personal journey. They discover, after a bit of trial and error, that they are an excellent tea service, taking their cart from town to town, offering tea and a comforting ear for people. But is that all there is to life? Are they more than just their job? What’s out there in the wilderness? 

Soon, Dex encounters Mosscap, a robot who has been tasked with finding out if humanity needs anything. After so much time away, the robots don’t have to interact with humans, but curiosity has sent Mosscap in search of answers. Primarily, though, that question is addressed in the second novella. The first book is very much focused on Dex as they search for existential answers about their own life. The addition of Mosscap to their journey helps Dex, however, as a sounding board and a view of life outside of their bubble of humanity. 

The first book could absolutely exist on its own, but does feel incomplete without Mosscap’s journey. In A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, Mosscap gets their time to shine. In fact, because robots haven’t been a part of humanity’s lives for so long, every town that Dex and Mosscap visit basically turns into a celebrity sighting. The humans of Panga are thrilled to see a robot and Mosscap keeps asking what the needs of humanity are along the way. 

Although Mosscap is a robot, we see their humanity throughout the events of the book, particularly as the pair head towards the City, a place teeming with people, a University, and hopefully all the answers Mosscap is looking for. But, along the way, their priorities change and it’s clear that robots, just like people, are complicated and complex. Mosscap’s emotions lead them down a road away from the City, and Dex and Mosscap discover truths about themselves in the process. 

Both novellas are wonderful little reads and they work fantastic as a pair, so it’s great that Tordotcom is putting this out as a collected work for the first time. NetGalley graciously provided me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review, but as I said, this book is absolutely delightful from start to finish. 

Monk and Robot by Chambers is available in Trade Paperback on May 6. 

Synopsis

The Starship Atlantis takes you on an unforgettable journey through the extraordinary. From alien civilizations and rogue AI to desperate missions on the brink of collapse, these stories will transport you across the stars into the heart of the unknown.

This anthology features six never-before-published novellas and short stories, plus two exclusive bonus tales.

Explore epic adventures crafted by eight USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling authors, whose works have captivated readers and sold over ten million copies worldwide.

Stories:
The Return by Joshua Dalzelle
Locust Twilight by Steven Konkoly
Hope Springs by Lindsay Buroker
Glass Lanterns by Anthony J. Melchiorri
Redwoods by Nathan Hystad
Starborn by Jasper T. Scott
Helpful Machines by Bobby Adair
Knight’s Gambit by Samuel Peralta

Review

Writer’s Note: Samuel Peralta, who wrote the forward and the concluding story for this short story collection, previously curated a number of sci-fi/fantasy anthologies, of which I have appeared in five of them with short stories of my own. 

Short story anthologies and collections are fantastic books for those unsure of what exactly they are looking for or wanting to read. By reading a shorter length work, you can find new authors that you vibe with and may even discover something you’d never find otherwise. 

Tales from the Starship Atlantis is a new collection from a collective of sci-fi and fantasy authors who call themselves Discover Sci-Fi. They had a previous collection of stories assembled in 2019 entitled Tales from the Starship DIscovery and plan to release another volume this fall, Tales from the Starship Endeavor.

With all these starships, all the stories are space-based sci-fi fare, right? You’d be wrong there. It definitely starts that way with The Return by Joshua Dalzelle, but there are a blend of Earth-based sci-fi stories as well from about half of the authors. 

My favorite of the bunch was Starborn by Jasper T. Scott. While the story has a definite space-based tone to it, most of it takes place on a planet with mysterious origins. Before long, the reader is clued in to the fact that the story is flipped from how it’s normally presented in books and stories, and the planet isn’t all it’s first presented as. And then, for fun, there are some subtle (and not so subtle) allusions to some current geo-political situations and figures that add a slightly humorous (and maybe troubling) twist to everything. 

And I know I’m biased, but I have always loved the stories that Samuel Peralta has put out. His output over the years hasn’t been huge like other authors (Peralta devotes more time to other pursuits like curating works and putting books and works of art in space – see https://www.lunarcodex.com/ for more info), but what he does write is always fascinating and thought-provoking. He has a point of view on his short stories that isn’t something you see from most authors. 

If there is a downside to the collection, a few of the stories feel incomplete. Like they are just a sample of much larger works. Which, given the nature of the Discovery Sci-Fi group, is definitely a good chance with some of the authors and their other works they want readers to find and read. 

I’d recommend checking out Tales from the Starship Atlantis. Eight fun sci-fi stories and each one has its own flavor and personality. 

Synopsis

The number one best-selling series that Audible listeners call “wonderfully entertaining”, “packed with humor, geek references and thought-provoking storylines”, and performed by “a true master story teller and actor” returns as the Bobs face their deadliest challenge yet.

The Bobiverse is a different place in the aftermath of the Starfleet War, and the days of the Bobs gathering in one big happy moot are far behind. There’s anti-Bob sentiment on multiple planets, the Skippies playing with an AI time bomb, and multiple Bobs just wanting to get away from it all.

But it all pales compared to what Icarus and Daedalus discover on their 26,000-year journey to the center of the galaxy. Sure, it could settle the Fermi Paradox for good (and what Bob doesn’t want to solve a mystery of the universe?). But it also reveals a threat to the galaxy greater than anything the Bobs could have imagined.

Just another average day in the Bobiverse.

Review

There are plenty of books that work just as well in any medium – physical, digital, audio. But there are a few books and series that I endeavor to read via audio and the Bobiverse books are on that list. I’m sure they work fine on their own in print, but combining Dennis E. Taylor’s words with Ray Porter’s narration make the Bobiverse books sing. 

In 2016, Taylor released We Are Legion (We Are Bob), and a sci-fi cult classic was born. He put out three total books between 2016 and 2017 and it seemed that the Bobiverse was neatly tied up. Then, in the fall of 2020, Taylor released a fourth book in the series, Heaven’s River. While I loved the first three books, I didn’t connect as much with this book, even though it was a nice respite in the midst of the pandemic. 

Not Till We Are Lost released four months ago and it was like a comfortable blanket after four years being away from the Bobs. I thought it was a great return to form for Taylor and Porter and enjoyed every minute of it. 

So what’s the Bobiverse? Well, it starts with Bob (duh), our main protagonist, getting killed in the first chapter of the first book. Then, he “wakes” up a century later as the brain behind an A.I. that will be controlling exploratory space probes. Throughout the first four books, Bob cloned himself numerous times (and the clones cloned themselves as well), hence a group of “Bobs” who renamed themselves upon cloning. Bill, Homer, Riker are just a few of the names that pop up in the early books with Icarus and Daedalus playing a big part in this installment. 

The Bobiverse books are a great framing device for a variety of sci-fi tropes from exploration to first contact, futuristic politics to space wars, and many other subgenres in between. Since Bob (and all of his clones) are Artificial Intelligences, they are essentially immortal, but Taylor keeps it interesting with the lifespans of other characters and how that immortality affects the Bobs themselves. Taylor keeps it all grounded in science, but he has a nice heaping pile of humor that helps each of the stories along. 

If you haven’t tried reading any of the Bobiverse books, you really should start with We Are Legion (We Are Bob) and if you do, I bet you’ll find it a quick and enjoyable read. Once you do, I imagine it won’t be too long before you find yourself waiting for the next Bob book, just like me. Not Till We Are Lost is a fine addition to the Bobiverse and sets up future books quite well. 

As an Audible Original, Not Till We Are Lost was first published on September 5, 2024. The Kindle version was recently published on January 5, 2025. 

Synopsis

An Astra Militarum Novel

Cadia. This proud world stood defiant for centuries – a bulwark against the forces of Chaos residing in the Eye of Terror. All of this would change when it was targeted for destruction by Abaddon the Despoiler as part of his Thirteenth Black Crusade.

READ IT BECAUSE

The Fall of Cadia is a touchstone moment of the Warhammer 40,000 timeline. This incredible battle led to the opening of the Great Rift and ushered in a grim new era in which even greater threats assailed the Imperium.

THE STORY

Cadia licks its wounds in the wake of the Thirteenth Black Crusade. The heretic forces retreat on all fronts. The day is won. But Lord Castellan Creed cannot rest easy. Something tells him the assault was a mere prelude to something greater, something more final. He is right. Out of the Eye of Terror comes Abaddon the Despoiler, at the head of a warhost unmatched in scale since the dread days of the Horus Heresy.

In the face of the looming apocalypse, Creed must weld the champions of Cadia into a bulwark capable of withstanding Abaddon’s fury. And in orbit, the Despoiler himself finds his own alliance teetering on a knife edge…

This is a tale told at epic scale, from the tables of high command to the slaughter of the pylon fields, and with a huge cast of characters from self-styled demigods to the rank-and-file foot soldiers of the Imperium.

This is the story of Abaddon’s greatest conquest. This is Cadia’s last stand.

Review

Robert Rath proves himself in one (admittedly, pretty thicc!) book that he is easily among the top tier echelon of 40K authors on the scene right now. Juggling many multiple POVs plus an extended cast, several plot threads introduced not just in this book but threads originating from campaign books, White Dwarf articles, and years worth of titbits of lore, whilst also telling one of the biggest stories in modern Warhammer 40,000 history, it’s really impressive to see that this book excels in telling such a gripping sci-fi epic.

So let’s get into why I think this is one of the best 40k books of the past 10 years.

The Fall of Cadia tells the story of, well, the fall of Cadia. For non-40k people, Cadia is a highly-militaristic planet that guards the Imperium against the demonic forces of Chaos that threaten to spill out of the Eye of Terror, a rent in the fabric of space & time. Cadia has been a staple of this vast setting for a good number of years now, and this very event is the catalyst for the direction in which the current narrative canon of Warhammer 40,00 has taken. It’s almost like a BC/AD type thing. In this grand sweeping story we follow not just the Imperial Guards (aka the boots on the ground soldiers), but also their Leaders; we follow fighter pilots, Space Marines, Battle Sisters of the Adepta Sororitas, even traitorous, demon-twisted members of the 13th Black Crusade. And Rath manages to handle this vast cast with aplomb. Every POV is unique from each other, every character with their own personalities, depth, and importance to the narrative. I think one the greatest things you could do with POV characters is make them so recognisable that if you were to hide any mention of their name, you’d still be able to tell who is who, and this is very much the case here. He also handles the reoccurring characters (like Abaddon the Despoiler & Ursarkar E. Creed) really well, knowing what makes them tick and who they are as characters deeply. His portrayal of Abaddon in particular was brilliant! Abbadon is a great antagonist and in this book he is a truly terrifying force of Chaos power.

With the character work being so well done, it’s also great to know that this is a well plotted, well paced, and cinematically written story. The entire time I was reading this, I had such a vivid image in my head of what was happening; the brutality of the 40K setting can very go understated, and this particular battle/war is viscerally depicted. Rath lets you feel the crack of lasfire, the crunch of tank tracks on destroyed ground, the chaotic nature of all-out violence. It reads like a high-budget epic TV series, the kind of thing that sells subscriptions and is appointment viewing. I was so invested in this book, despite the fact that I knew the ultimate outcome of it all, and yet found the final third to be harrowing, emotional, and rousing. Throughout The Fall of Cadia, you get moments of comradery between the Imperial Guard – TWENTY-FOUR, IN THE WAR – or the defiant chant of an entire planets population – CADIA STANDS! – it’s enough to feel you with the same sense of defiant resistance against impossible odds you experience with great movies like Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan, Gladiator etc. There is a poem that gets recited on a number of occasions throughout this book, but I think the opening sums up what I think this book is really showcasing:

This is not a foxhole.
This is the rich earth of my world.
Dirt I threw in handfuls on the coffins of troopers that came before me.
Those who stood in the ranks on the bastion wall, lasgun in hand, And told the Eye it would not have our future.

As much as I loved this book, however, I would say it is definitely boosted by my love of the setting in general. I knew a lot of lore surrounding this going into it, and how this event affected the broad setting as a whole in the future. It does sort of expect you to know a bit about what’s going on beforehand – so if you’re new to the setting, maybe do some homework first – but if I don’t think you’d miss out on much.

I must also give a shout out to the incredible audiobook narration by David Seddon, who manages to add another layer of drama by giving one of my favourite performances of an audiobook I’ve ever listened to. His range of accents (all the Cadians sound like they are from the North East of England, yet the differences are subtle and masterfully vocalised so as to suggest Teeside, Northumberland, Newcastle, as opposed to just a the broader “Gerodie” cadance), vocal effects, and passion for the material on offer really shines through.

So, anyway, as you can tell, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The Fall of Cadia is a must read for all Warhammer 40,000 fans, a book I think should be read by sci-fi enthusiasts in general, and it’s a book that has skyrocketed to becoming one of my favourite 40K books I’ve ever read!

Rating: /10

Synopsis:

MODIFICATIONS COME AT A PRICE.

Detective Sol Harkones is tangled in the wires of a deadly conspiracy involving defective body modifications causing permanent brain damage. A suspect is known, but something more dangerous may be lurking in the shadows.

A city plagued by waste.

Violence fills the streets.

Oblivion is within reach.

Review:

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Mystery deaths, a determined detective, cybernetic modifications (both legal and not), mechanical dragons, and a whole lot of action make up this book. It was a wild ride from start to finish.

It begins at a frenetic pace and doesn’t let up until the end. Sol Harkones is the main character, a detective assigned to investigate the unusual death of a teenager. He’s desperate to close it out; in his world, completing cases is the only way to get paid, and he’s hurting for credits. He’s unwilling to take a break until the mystery is solved, which makes for a really long day.

The story was action-packed and a lot of fun. I especially liked the various cybernetic mods presented (the illegal ones were pretty creative at times), and Sol’s stubborn refusal to augment himself with any. It made for an interesting dichotomy and laid the groundwork for some of his personal challenges. But Sol isn’t without a means to combat the cybernetically-enhanced criminals he confronts, and there are a few pretty cool combat scenes.

This book doesn’t do anything terribly groundbreaking, but it’s fun. Sometimes I need a book like that, one that doesn’t force me to think too hard, but has a great story and a few unique elements to keep me entertained. Falling Into Oblivion is like an action movie in book form, and I think it’s a promising start to the series.

So if you’re looking for an action-packed sci-fi with a mystery at its heart, definitely check this one out.

Falling Into Oblivion is available for preorder and will release October 4, 2024.

Synopsis

The New York Times and USA Today bestselling series

They dive so humanity survives. Now they take to the sea.

In the fourth installment of the Hell Divers series, the Sea Wolf sets out to search for the Metal Islands. Leading the expedition is legendary Hell Diver Xavier Rodriguez. After enduring for a decade on the poisoned surface, his survival skills will be put to the test on the dangerous open seas.

But storms, sea monsters, and the cannibalistic Cazadores aren’t the only threat to X and his small crew. Their mission will uncover hard truths about the history of the war that left humankind stranded in the air for centuries. And the fate of those still living on the airships might very well rest on this fragile and perilous journey to find a new home.

Review

Grabbed up a whole bunch of these on a wild audible sale, and I’m finally getting back to it. R.C. Bray does yet another fantastic narration for the series. 

I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again, but these have such a breakneck pace with so much action that they’re just so fun. I also realized during this one that I listen to my audiobooks fast, which means there’s hardly a breath between action beats. 

Xavier takes to the sea, finally in sight of the paradise they so desperately seek. But sea monsters, radiation, and crazy storms aren’t the only thing that he’ll have to overcome. Tin, and the new captain will take on a different mission, this time in Cuba. The stakes are higher than ever, but the payoff is information for the reader! 

Is finally finding a home in the sun worth entering an all-out war? Not to mention a war that they’re not even sure they can win…

And folks, we’ve finally got it! The full explanation as to why the world is the way it is! Remember this is an alt history scifi, where radiation is so high that the remnants of humanity have been forced to live in airships above the crazy weather patterns to survive. The need for repairs, supplies and answers, drives those willing to dive down to the surface for the sake of everyone else…the hell divers. For spoilers-sake, I won’t discuss the reason the world fell apart, but it brought to mind notes Horizon Zero Dawn and Terminator. 

With new enemies and horrors, the suspense was at an all-time high, and I was just surprised to not have another run in with the sirens (at least for me, a favorite enemy). This one did feel kind of like the cliffhanger came out of nowhere I will say, kind of like we got half a climax, but I’m certainly on the edge of my seat for more. And finally we got the sea…and with it, SHARKS.