Reviewed by Chelsey Tucker

Suspenseful sci-fi that provokes questions of morality and tests the convictions of the characters we have come to love.

The Phoenix Elite are back again for a third time in the most exciting installment yet, Prisoner’s Dilemma. After the group publicly defeated the Hitler clones, more secrets surrounding Talos start to burn a deep desire for the truth.

Carlos and Lequoia begin to search all over the globe in hopes of finding the hidden prison that many of the members of the Phoenix Elite remember being at during their childhood. Eventually, they run into trouble and are warned off by warriors in animal masks. Now they have a new set of people to worry about, but it feels like they are on the right track.

While Carlos and Lequoia trek through the jungle, Adam is having a hard time adjusting to being a family man. Not because he isn’t a good husband or father, but because he is struggling with being confined to a wheelchair. He starts to suffer from even higher levels of anxiety and PTSD while questioning his purpose. “He was born the way he was for a reason. His anxious, relentless mind found purpose in the Phoenix Elite, defeating Bricker, dismantling his nuclear arsenal, and stopping Zed’s global insurrection. But was that all?”

Soon after Adam saved the world, video footage of the incident was analyzed. It turns out something remarkable had taken place: Adam shot some sort of energy out of the palm of his hand. The terror of the unknown was fueled by Talos, inciting doubt upon whether the Phoenix Elite will always be heroes and not liabilities. It is a race for the team to discover external and internal truths before they are outsmarted and wiped off the planet.

Each character seems to be in the final rounds of many of their personal battles all before their special talents can be fully harnessed. Everyone’s superpowers reflect their personality and/or point to something special about the person their DNA is sourced from. Two of the best superpowers belong to Carlos and Henrietta.

Carlos Ramirez is a badass doctor who is a clone of the fiery revolutionary Che Guevara. His insatiable thirst for truth and burning corrupt systems to the ground make it no surprise that he can throw fireballs out of his hands. “His fists burst into flames. Fire orbits his hands like ethereal torches, flickering with the wind. He doesn’t feel their heat. Papi told him the fire in his heart would come through his hands. Carlos always thought it meant the work in the ER. Guess not.”

Henrietta Kebe, the current director of the Phoenix Elite, is a clone of the great liberator Harriet Tubman. Entrusted with secrets beyond her zone of comfort, Henrietta often needs to get in and out of situations quickly, which makes teleporting an invaluable and perfect weapon for her.

The shifting perspectives from chapter to chapter add more suspense than we’ve seen previously in the Phoenix Elite series. Clark lets readers in on secrets that certain characters know and other things they don’t know while still keeping the mystery guarded for us until the right time. This book is filled with hard-hitting reveals.

There are times when certain scenes feel rushed, leaving me wanting more of a reaction out of other characters. However, the theme of unveiling secrets is consistent throughout. There are times when you don’t know who to trust or who is telling the truth. While constantly questioning everyone’s motives, you are confronted with the sense that for many of the characters, it could go either way whether or not they will finally get caught in a Talos trap.

Before starting Prisoner’s Dilemma I was excited to get back to the lives of the “Bird Buddies” as Brandon, the resident Benjamin Franklin clone, would say. Without a doubt, C.T. Clark did not disappoint with this one. I’m filled with as much giddy anticipation for the fourth book as I was the third.

This novel could be enjoyed on its own, but with how excellent the first few books are and how much fuller the world is by now because of it, I don’t know why you’d skip them. High school teachers and libraries will appreciate this series’ cross-genre capabilities, and sci-fi lovers with an appreciation of influential history will find it deeply satisfying.

Thank you for reading Chelsey Tucker’s book review of Prisoner’s Dilemma (The Phoenix Elite, 3) by C.T. Clark! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Kathy L. Brown

This can’t-miss sequel puts the reader through a wormhole to a realm filled with intrigue, adventure, and action.

In A Sense for Memory: Part One the reader cheers on the exploits of a tough Rej-Jir soldier/cop, Commander Qwatajawa, as she investigates the theft of a mysterious and powerful artifact, as well as a ninja of sorts who fights a strange entity deep within a bioengineered planet.

A Sense for Memory: Part Two doubles down on its engaging protagonists, introducing two rock stars of the joint. These soldiers think the story is about them, but Commander Qwatajawa, her loyal squad, and her friend, illusionist Xa-Kol, must put a stop to their audacious plan.

In a prologue, we meet Supreme Commander Nazatl, a Rej-Jir, and Supreme Commander Soropo-Omb, a Zurxok. They soon show they have the “right stuff” as their undercover mission to steal the spaceship A Sense for Memory and its illegally developed wormhole technology goes off with style. But the reader learns that serious political shenanigans are going on behind the scenes. Have the national heroes gone rogue? Or worse, been subverted by a powerful alien intelligence?

Commander Qwatajawa, the head cop of an isolated beach village, experiences unique combat situations and acquires special knowledge in Part One that her superiors believe might be useful on an apprehension and recovery mission. She and her team are dispatched to investigate the spaceship’s theft and follow Nazatl and Soropo-Omb, somehow convincing them to stand down and start following orders again.

It’s a tricky situation, and Qwatajawa’s investigation soon confirms that an old nemesis may be behind it all. And the artifact she thought destroyed has somehow come back into play. When Qwatajawa and company locate A Sense for Memory, it all seems easy. A little too easy. Nasty surprises await.

While Qwatajawa and her squad are dispatched to recover the stolen ship and prohibited tech, Xa-Kol, the Zurxok protagonist of Part One, is summoned to investigate a mystery at the training academy she left fifty years ago. A monster she defeated and killed as a cadet is suddenly and inexplicably causing problems and even calling out for her.

The two novellas of A Sense for Memory Part One are woven together into a more complex story in Part Two: more characters and more character development; bigger, more cinematic settings; and greater challenges as characters struggle to overcome problems. Experiencing these storylines come together and knit into a satisfying whole is to enjoy exciting space opera at its finest.

Part Two introduces and expands on several characters, such as the hotshots Nazatl and Soropo-Omb and Qwatajawa’s team members. All are magnificently differentiated and portrayed through personal opinions, actions, and speech patterns. And the original characters continue to delight.

Like the first book, readers learn about the world through scenes, rich in revealing dialogue and exciting action sequences. The novel uses summary passages sparingly and appropriately.

The nature of duty, particularly in a military chain of command, is front and center among the issues and themes of the book. Nazatl’s “monster” invites a closer look at relationships among the subjugated and the powerful, as do all the behind-the-scenes political machinations among the governmental entities in the story. With the title of the book the name of a spaceship that is powered by forbidden technology, the reader can’t help but think about the complex interplay between science doing all that it can, but maybe not what it should. And who decides these things?

The book features many illustrations, which help the reader imagine the characters, setting, and important items even more clearly than their verbal description. And it is rich in dazzling technology befitting an advanced alien science fiction setting, for example, the armor “…which comprised segmented black plates. Each plate bore an intricate, layered structure, dispersing kinetic energy with ease, while embedded nanofibers ensured that any heat-based attack would dissipate…”

Part Two brings the reader up to speed on Part One events, both in a summary at the beginning of the book and within the story text. While you could follow the narrative without reading Part One first, it’d be most fulfilling taking in the series in order.

A Sense for Memory: Part Two kicks up the action several notches for Commander Qwatajawa and Xa-Kol. It’s a blast to see them interact with more formidable opponents. I sense some mutual respect in the rivalry with the errant Nazatl and Soropo-Omb and look forward to what’s next of this dynamic series.

Thank you for reading Kathy L. Brown’s book review of A Sense for Memory: Part Two by R.H. Stevens! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Timothy Thomas

A post-apocalyptic thrill ride of galactic proportions

A mysterious obelisk linked to the spread of a deadly cybernetic disease. A psychically empowered emperor waging war across the galaxy and slaughtering anyone with a hint of the plague. A trio of escapees from the research facility where the artifact was studied.

The Call of Abaddon is a straight-up page-turner. With layers upon layers of characters, backstory, and worldbuilding that culminate in a satisfying conclusion, this science fiction novel from the mind of Colin Searle is a welcome addition to the genre.

The Earth has been rendered largely uninhabitable due to a toxic biosphere, which is the unavoidable consequence of the Confederacy emptying their thermonuclear stockpile to stop the Abaddon Obelisk’s prior attempt at Ascension. Now, eight years after the United Earth Federation (UEF) Science Institute lost three of its test subjects, who were critical to controlling the artifact, Abaddon is preparing for another planetary-scale Ascension event.

Jason (aka Subject 107), who has previously only ever heard the voices of Abaddon in his dreams, has now begun hearing them while awake, with the psychoactive drug Osmium being his only relief. But when a routine salvage run turns disastrous, revealing Jason’s vulnerability to Abaddon’s reach, he, David (his brother), and Sam (a fellow escapee) determine the only way to sever the connection is to return to the Science Institute and find Abaddon themselves.

Elsewhere in the solar system, Anne Oakfield is preparing a rescue of her brother, Zeke, as part of a larger plan to kill Emperor Mariko. The Federation has surrendered to the emperor, bringing him and his warships to Earth for him to take over as sovereign ruler, creating the perfect opportunity for Zeke’s forces to take him down. Can Mariko be stopped or will all humankind fall to Abaddon’s devastation?

The Call of Abaddon excels in its worldbuilding, creating memorable and realistic settings within which the story can take place. It is a densely layered narrative environment, wherein the Solar War and the toxic biosphere contribute complexity and depth to a larger-than-life narrative. These layers of lore are not merely throwaway background elements but instead make their impact known throughout the story.

For example, in this version of a future where many people have chosen to augment themselves with cybernetic enhancements, the Nanophage (the cybernetic disease) not only impacts inanimate things but infects people too. Emperor Mariko’s goal to destroy the Nanophage wherever it is found therefore results in genocides and mass murders wherever he goes.

While it would be easy to allow these layers to fall by the wayside, the book does a great job of keeping them integrated and positioned front and center for the reader. Beneath the canopy of worldbuilding and lore sits themes of identity, redemption, and purpose. The broken people of the world must expose the truth to free themselves from the bondage of fear and the shame of the past. Rather than offering definitive conclusions on these topics, the story intentionally presents its characters in the process of discovery.

The Call of Abaddon is perfectly at home among the post-apocalyptic science fiction genre. It’s got great potential as a series, but it’s also a gem all on its own.

Thank you for reading Timothy Thomas’s book review of The Call of Abaddon by Colin Searle! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Timothy Thomas

A thrilling novel grounded in the realities of climate change, AI, and the race for quantum computing

Against the background of an exponentially accelerated climate crisis and full AI integration, a PhD student at MIT appears to have discovered a new form of non-local quantum entanglement, previously considered an impossibility.

Skyler Wexler’s research at Lincoln Laboratory was funded with the goal of creating the world’s first quantum computer using biological structures that exhibit quantum effects, but instead, his discovery threatens to rewrite modern theoretical physics altogether.

The Quantum Revelations is a wildly unpredictable narrative with a show-stopping climax, pondering the interplay of science, religion, and technology in a way that is as captivating as it is disturbing.

While the first half of the novel stays fairly grounded, the second half takes off in a perplexing way, utilizing some occasionally challenging eschatological rhetoric from the Bible. The latter half’s pacing diverges from its first half, increasing rapidly to the point of feeling rushed. This dissonance between the two halves of the story by no means takes away from its appeal, but it does result in some important scenes feeling distant.

The novel handles its high-level physics well, remaining accessible to a non-physicist audience by breaking down the concepts into digestible chunks. In fact, readers may even walk away with a greater understanding of modern physics and the problems/contradictions that plague the leading theories today because of it. This is, indeed, a testament to the author’s thorough understanding of the field and of his writing prowess.

As a whole, The Quantum Revelations is as informative in its physics as it is grandiose in its presentation of reality—a compelling read. It may not be the most optimistic in its conjectures of the future regarding AI and climate change, but the realistic brush with which it paints these portrayals highlights the problems inherent in the direction our world is heading, functioning effectively as a cautionary tale for mankind. Readers who enjoy speculative science fiction will find a lot to like in this offering from Stuart Heinrich.

Thank you for reading Timothy Thomas’s book review of The Quantum Revelations by Stuart Heinrich! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Andrea Marks-Joseph

An emotional, expansive story that explores the vulnerable, personal consequences of multiverse politics

With multiverse-collapsing twists and a great cast of narrators, The Cold Light of Fate showcases some truly profound humanity. Catanzarite has made an expansive story intimate and accessible.

The chapters cycle through a variety of characters’ points of view. A large part of what makes this such a compulsive read is that all of them are so incredibly different. We are consistently being served new details that we can choose to believe or not. All of these people—no matter which side they’re on—play a part in this “save the planet, protect the universe” storyline. The characters have jobs with real risk, real reward, and a high likelihood that their job is going to change.

“Nothing like visiting your parents to send you back to childhood.”

In her story, Svetlana is desperate to protect her teenage daughter Evan from the dangers of outside universes, while Evan claims she is the prophesied savior in charge of saving the planet from the Moon Children, an alien force trying to make Jovian Earth unlivable.

The Jovian Queen, Caroline, is a frail human now. She is no longer able to take her true form as a six-stories tall powerful Jovian alien. Now she’s experiencing difficult emotions for what feels like the first time, while undergoing one of the most uncomfortable experiences of living in a human body: being forced to confront the fact that you’re getting old. Caroline is brought to her age humbly. Her back aches, and she finds herself getting emotional while talking to old colleagues.

The other universes don’t know Caroline’s body is failing, nor that she’s lost her Jovian power. She is in this strange situation where only the people in her bunker know she’s stuck as a frail human, and they won’t blow her cover because they need her to represent them in the escalating inter-universe conflict negotiations.

There’s a cloud of grief moving its way gently throughout this novel, making sure that the reader never forgets how heavy and haunting the impact of loss can be. The people in power may have moved on to new strategies and their enemies may have created fresh havoc, but the people whose loved ones died still live with echoes of grief in its many forms.

Because of the multiverse and time-traveling nature of the Jovian Universe series, we also feel the anxiety of not knowing whether their loved ones are alive in the other universes (and not wanting/feeling able to ask. ) We feel the looming weight of characters knowing they must tell someone that their loved one has died, and we feel the inner turmoil of them constantly delaying and denying their grief because they can’t fall apart while the world needs saving.

It’s impossible not to think about themes of climate change and environmental conservation when reading Catanzarite’s divine nature writing and the fear of the coming dystopian storm. Her characters have an emotional connection to the trees, to fresh drinkable water, to breathable oxygen. The first thing Natasha, Svetlana’s granddaughter, does when she gets home to Earth is run a bath: “The water would calm her unsettled mind. It had always comforted her. When she’d lived in outer space, it was water that she missed most of all.”

We can’t help but consider the future of our planet and how, all across the globe, the things these characters love about planet Earth are already disappearing. “There is a reason you are here,” Dayana said. “I think it’s because we can’t let Earth die. Or—that sounds so big and horrible.” “No, you’re right. We cannot let it die.”

Catanzarite writes in the sweet spot of balance between pulled back, plot-driven phrasing that conveys her characters’ intense human emotion and vivid descriptive imagery for us to savor: Svetlana describes Caroline’s fragile, aging human form as “so unassuming and small-boned, perched on a stool with her back hunched like a branch made to hold up too much snow.” When Dayana smiled, “the light changed. Evan swore the surrounding plants leaned their thin branches toward her.”

This book imagines a world where the Earth’s precious resources can be honored as they should be, tackles ideas around an oppressed group fighting back against their oppressor, and depicts nations engaging in generations-long strategic battles over the rights to fertile land. I love that great sci-fi stories have a special, specific way of reflecting our lives and our culture back to us.

Catanzarite writes her characters’ disabilities in a way that feels intimately true and nuanced, making them so relatable to me as a disabled reader. This kind of understanding and perspective included in details when we read from disabled characters’ perspective is rare, and though these scenes of conversations and narration are brief, they are so memorable to me.

One area the story might have gone deeper is in its treatment of clones. It doesn’t exactly acknowledge the in-your-face exploitation of them, nor the complex ethical dilemmas it causes since they’re modeled after humans but treated as though they are machinery, sometimes almost invisible.

Of note to readers who are sensitive on the topic, The Cold Light of Fate features mass death of a specific population group by various methods. These events progress from infrequent but newsworthy attacks which communities were prepared for—to widespread, overwhelming global attacks on a scale so catastrophic that “modern society has basically ceased to exist at this point.”

Let’s just say this: don’t start reading this exhilarating book unless you’re ready to stay up through the night. Catanzarite reveals game-changing twist after game-changing twist and does it while ensuring that we’re connected emotionally to its characters. Whether you’re into sci-fi and multiverse adventures or not, The Cold Light of Fate is going to grip you. No one’s doing it like Catanzarite.

Thank you for reading Andrea Marks-Joseph’s book review of The Cold Light of Fate by Kim Catanzarite! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Frankie Martinez

A powerful story of humanity, nature, and the fight for truth.

In a world where most of humanity has fled to live deep in Earth’s underground, Violet Murphy refuses to leave her family’s farm on the surface. Located in Fulminara, one of two habitable islands left on Earth, the Murphy estate is home to Violet, her horse Firestorm, and the relics of her family’s agricultural research.

Life is peaceful until one day, officers of the government’s Science Bureau arrive to conduct the annual census and invite Violet to visit their facility underground in the capital of Apricus. What is supposed to be a presentation on the Murphy family’s developments in food generation devolves into an unsettling interrogation—one which leaves Violet drugged and imagining the voices of what she believes are trapped animals in the stark hallways of the Bureau, pleading for help.

When Violet returns home and feels an unusually close sense of comfort from Firestorm, she is convinced that the voices she heard were real.

Meanwhile, there are others experiencing a strange connection with animals. Emily Steuben, an Earth preservationist, discovers ducklings at her home for the first time in three years after being led there by other animals’ insistence. Jack Collins, a retail director, is hunting a doe on the surface when he is suddenly struck with the deer’s fear, so much that he leaves and decides to swear off hunting for the rest of his life. Mason Agu, a computer programmer for the government’s Infrastructure Bureau, is spending a quiet evening at home in Apricus, until he gets a strong feeling from his cat that something has happened next door to his elderly, beloved neighbor.

The four strangers come together after responding to Violet’s vague online forum post about a “special connection to animals” and quickly become fast friends. As their bond grows, so do their questions about the government, especially after learning about Violet’s interrogation there.

The organization’s increasingly strange activities—starting with the census and leading to the announcement that they’d be evacuating Aprica permanently for an unknown, habitable land—lead the friends to start an investigation into the Bureau, one that leads them down a dangerous path to the truth.

Imber is about the light and dark in the world, highlighting both the comfort of the bonds between living things, as well as the strength to fight against overwhelming odds.

Mistina’s debut is filled with expansive, dynamic descriptions of nature and humanity. The novel’s quiet opening is moving and immersive—Violet walks through her family’s estate, remembering the day she found a dead hawk, only to find Firestorm peeking through the windows of the greenhouse in search of Violet’s mother after her untimely death.

Mistina is also playful with her portrayal of gestures and movement. Each character interacts with one another in unique ways: Jack can’t keep his eyes off of Violet’s freckles; Mason’s deep voice contains a childlike innocence when he’s around his cat or Firestorm.

Because descriptions are so detailed and plot details are so heavily focused on the government’s secret plans, the pacing of the story can be quite slow. There is something comforting about it, especially in the first parts of the novel that are more focused on worldbuilding and the friendship between Violet, Jack, Emily, and Mason, but it also does not quite match the content in the novel’s latter half with its somewhat shocking violence. A lot of information is jammed into the last half of the novel because of this. While Imber does reach a satisfactory, open-ended conclusion in the larger story about evacuating humanity from Earth, I longed for more important plot threads between the four friends.

But that’s also because I wanted to linger in Mistina’s world for just a little bit longer without the government’s evil plans. While lies, deceit, and the end of the world run underneath the surface of the novel, Imber is a gorgeous portrait of humanity, rich with the warmth between people and their chosen companions, whether they be family, friends, or animals.

Thank you for reading Frankie Martinez’s book review of Imber by Deborah Mistina! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Nick Gardner

Love conquers all, even the bizarre fantastical creatures from other realms.

Sheriff Sol Jefferson loves his wife, Yaya, more than anything. In their quiet island community of Webberley Island off the coast of Oregon, their mutual attachment to each other is easy, but when a red, seemingly invincible creature appears on the beach and begins murdering innocent people, their love is put to the test. While Sol and Yaya seek answers to this creature’s existence, their world is challenged and expanded to include other realms, new powers, and even dinosaurs.

Alan and Sairung Wright’s characters are without flaws, inherently good. While they battle demons, mages, and giant humanoid serpents, it’s easy to pick up who is good and who is evil. Sol, the sheriff, always does what’s right and is the voice of reason when his friend, Toby, for example, chooses to fight a creature using hand-to-hand combat rather than a gun. And Sol’s passion for Yaya, depicted as always kind and reasonable, draws him to her side as her protector for most of the book. Though their portrayal as absolute moral people may be simplistic, it makes the contrast more pronounced when the two are pitted against the seemingly incurable evils of other realms.

The novel begins with a bang, with a monster and murder on the second page, and the gore is a gut punch, filled with decapitations and slews of blood. After Sol sees a man cut open on the beach, the pacing is breakneck, each short chapter depicting a gruesome murder from shifting perspectives.

But the book takes a turn after the first fifty or so pages, moving into sci-fi and supernatural fields that are, for lack of a better word, totally weird. The realistic world of Webberley Island expands to involve otherworldly “realms” filled with creatures that sometimes resemble a child’s imaginative drawing brought to life. The descriptions of this other world are intriguing, unique, and easy to visualize, but some of it tones down the pacing with an abundance of worldbuilding. The pacing does pick up for the final third of the book, featuring action-packed showdowns between Yaya, Sol, and an increasingly imaginative series of murder-bent monsters.

The Wrights’ imagination sets Two Suns apart from other horror or thriller novels. If the reader isn’t too queasy from the gore, they may even see the humor in the creatures’ designs. With the humor, the horror, the science fiction, and the supernatural all rolled into one, Two Suns is a difficult one to categorize, but the read is easy, intriguing, and filled with enough strangeness to expand the limits of the fictive dream.

Thank you for reading Nick Gardner’s book review of Two Suns by Alan Wright and Sairung Wright! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Gabriella Harrison

In which an irresistible adventure to an exoplanet transforms into a moving story about the complexity of sisterhood

Lissy and her crew just finished a horrendous mission. Their reputation within the space-salvaging industry is wrecked. So when she and her boyfriend find something with the potential to cleanse their reputation and wipe all their financial woes away, they’re quick to take it. But it’s going to take her sister, an anthropology professor at a prestigious university, to make it happen.

Despite the disaster of their last mission, the crew is eager to get started. Lissy’s sister, Therese, is insistent on following due process. That would help them all in the end since she needs to publish about the discovery, but it doesn’t win her any friends within the crew, especially since she is new and an introvert perceived as a snob.

Once they finally begin, it is immediately obvious that something is very wrong. The religious colony that inhabited the exoplanet before their arrival believed to have left fifty years ago for unknown reasons. The strange thing is that they left all their personal possessions behind. There is no evidence of a massacre. They’re just gone.

Things become even stranger when the rest of the crew finally see what they dub “The Anomaly.” A glowing artifact with an indecipherable origin that captivates everyone who looks at it. While everyone is still figuring out what to do, one of the crew members becomes sick, and things really start to go downhill from there.

The Glass Garden is a mystery-driven science fiction that unfolds over three days. On the first day, the crew arrives on the exoplanet, and The Anomaly is studied. The rest of the crew is introduced through Therese’s keen eyes: handsome Carver, whose main purpose in the crew seems to be to sweet-talk people and maintain peace; Tsieh, a sharp-eyed skeptic and brainiac; and McArdle, the hard-to-please pilot and mechanical whiz of the crew.

On the second day, they split into two teams; one conducting a proper in-depth study of The Anomaly and the other exploring the site where the previous colony stayed and trying to salvage anything of value. By the third day, they’re barely hanging on.

From the beginning, Therese is withdrawn, sitting at a corner of the ship’s galley, sipping coffee and observing her new crew members while remembering times when she has felt left out: “…she had flashes of the first day of sophomore year, sitting in the cafeteria of a new high school knowing absolutely nobody, hoping someone would sit with her, terrified that they would.”

With Therese, author Jessica Lévai aptly captures how easy it is to misunderstand an introvert who doesn’t know how to join a conversation with strangers. Balancing out Therese’s perspective is the equally nerdy Tsieh, who observes her reclusiveness as creepy: “She was probably listening, but not contributing, which was spooky as hell.”

Then Lissy enters, “splashing into the pond with all the subtlety of a rock thrown by a kindergartner.” Lissy is her younger, more vibrant, and daring sister. As the story progresses, the sibling rivalry and her resentment toward Therese for their mom’s preferential treatment toward her and repeated disregard of the career of a space salvager are evident. During one of their arguments, she remarks, “You never stand up for me when Mom tells me to get a real job or go back to school. It’s obvious you think I’m beneath you.” Amid the chaos of their mission, interactions such as this ground them in their humanity—a quiet reminder that beneath all the tension, they’re still just people. Unfortunately, Lissy’s sentiments rub off on the rest of the crew, and Therese must prove herself to belong.

The alien cave system of the exoplanet is brought to life through tactile, sensory detail, especially when the characters peel off their masks and interact physically with The Anomaly. These artistic details create an immersive and emotionally evocative atmosphere that is both magical and menacing, evoking awe and dread in equal measure. For instance:

“One wall of the cavern was lit as if from behind, and upon it were…images. Like a stained glass window in an abandoned cathedral…the images impressed on it reminded her of Tiffany lamps at the art museum, but more free, more alive. These were the flowers that watched martyrs put to death and grew exuberantly, mockingly, from their remains.”

Despite its emotional resonance, The Glass Garden leaves a few questions unresolved. While the ambiguity surrounding the sick crewmate is intentional, it doesn’t exactly provide closure, and readers may find this frustrating. The lack of psychological buildup, such as Therese and Lissy’s final decision concerning The Anomaly, can make some character decisions feel sudden, but in the novella form, these are likely to save space and allow for the reader to ponder the truth in the silence.

Jessica Lévai’s The Glass Garden is a surreal and thrilling science fiction novella that prompts you to wonder what truly exists beyond Earth, and it succeeds greatly in balancing introspection and action. Therese’s archaeological mindset provides a steady rhythm of analysis and reflection, while the unfolding mystery of The Anomaly keeps the tension alive.

Thank you for reading Gabriella Harrison’s book review of The Glass Garden: A Novella by Jessica Lévai! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Victoria Lilly

A throng of terror, loss, doubt, and reckoning with trauma swirls together in a collage of wondrous worlds.

Trina Bell is on the run. Strange human-like shadows chase her across towns and fields. But their nightmarish presence pales in strangeness compared to what happens to her with each new day. The world is changing.

The rough outline might stay similar, but details change, and no one recalls her presence from the previous cycle. No one, that is, until Trina meets an old librarian by the name of Colin. He, too, changes with the turnings, but he remains a librarian, and he remembers Trina even as days and worlds pass. This oddity unsettles Trina, and she latches onto Colin as a life buoy. 

Concerned for Trina—bewildered, young, alone in the world, and on the run from shadows—Colin takes her to a sanctuary for dispossessed girls. At first Trina believes she has finally found a safe harbor, someplace to make sense of what has been happening to her.

Then she meets the asylum’s resident physician, Dr. Sweets, and what he tells her disorients Trina even more than the turnings of the world have done: that she is the cause of them. From that point on, Trina is on an ever more desperate run for her life; from the shadows, the accelerating crumbling of each successive world, and Dr. Sweets himself. Yet the more she runs, the more she comes to realize that her pursuers might not just be behind her, but also within.

While the premise of multiple universes is hardly new in popular culture, success of certain Marvel films and, in 2022, Everything Everywhere All at Once has certainly increased the concept’s popularity and visibility. To put a fresh and compelling spin on it is, therefore, no small feat. I am happy to say that Christopher Hawkins has achieved such a feat with this book.

Jumping from small-town flyover-country America, to a Victorianesque metropolis, to a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and more, I Contain Multitudes contains quite a few worlds. Certain motifs connect each of them into a cycle. The library, where Colin works. The asylum for dispossessed women. The ensemble of recurring characters, from the kind and helpful Edie, to the increasingly violent and erratic Dr. Sweets.

Hawkins’s seamless and simple prose immerses the reader in every successive world so thoroughly, I wished each episode within the novel was a book in its own right. The cast and the constant locations and motifs not only give cohesion to the multiverse storyline, but attachment to them are the bricks upon which the structure of heightening tensions and stakes solidly rests.

At the center of the story, Trina begins as a relatively characterless figure. We know she is on the run, that she doesn’t dwell much on the reasons behind her world changing, and that she avoids attaching herself to people. The latter is understandable, since no one remembers her the next day anyway, but this is already a clue as to the true demons haunting Trina, and why she is the person that she is. Her latching first onto Colin and then the gentle asylum manager Edie simmers with tension, as Trina struggles to bring herself to open up, be vulnerable, and try to face a forgotten past.

“And she really did feel like it might be okay. Okay the way it hadn’t been in months. There was something so trustworthy in Edie’s smile, in the gentle way she held out her hand toward the wide, curving staircase at the end of the lobby, that Trina might have been happy to follow her anywhere.”

If there is one flaw to I Contain Multitudes—and it is not a major one—it is that the fast-paced psychological thriller story limits the extent to which the characters and the worlds are developed. There is enough of each world to intrigue and want to explore it, but ultimately that isn’t the point.

This is all, of course, part of the point of the story, these shortcomings logical within the central thematic thrust. Trina’s emotional arc, her relationships with the likes of Colin and Dr. Sweets, and the particulars of the worlds she visits are neatly tied together. 

The novel’s theme might be relatively simple, but as my dad would say, “simple is beautiful.” The emotional core, the punch of the story, makes for an affecting read. Lovers of drama will appreciate the final resolution, and thriller fans get more than their money’s worth from the journey to the said ending. The heroine escapes into neither fantasy nor oblivion, but bravely begins the world anew.

Thank you for reading Victoria Lilly’s book review of I Contain Multitudes by Christopher Hawkins! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Chelsey Tucker | Content warnings: attempted suicide

A provocative and peculiar story that examines technological dependency in a powerful near future

Quentin Wagner is raised offline, an oddity compared to the lives of his fellow Gen Alphas. But animosity, anxiety, and depression still found him. After a failed suicide attempt, he posts a lengthy diatribe on a social media platform, TrueSwitch, about how, “Our parents, the Millennials, became addicted to that digital world, so they felt it was only natural to pass that addiction on to their kids. But we’re the only ones paying that debt.” 

Even though Quentin is immediately disgusted at his impulsive word vomit and subsequently deletes the app, his post takes off and is the basis of the tumultuous Unplug Movement. He has sparked a movement that will never truly be his.

After #Unplug explodes, Amphibian “Phibs” Cantell tracks down Quentin—a person with basically no digital footprint—with the pure purpose of meeting his idol and partaking in Unplug. Phibs begins to orchestrate the meeting of various Boston College students in order for Quentin to speak and spread the philosophy.

Jax Halsteder is an intense 19 year old who is next to speak at the first meeting after Quentin. He talks “about coding and how he once saw it as valuable to society, only to realize how wrong he was thanks to Quentin’s post.” He gave up his full-ride scholarship to MIT because he was so moved by a social media post. Millions of people will join suit in shunning the internet, some even believing in no physical documentation at all. Of course, there is pushback that will eventually cause Jax and Quentin to reach their boiling point.

Unplugged is a strange, impossible to put down novella that is told mostly in the future tense. Zaddy, one of Quentin’s fathers, is the narrator, painting the picture of his little boy’s life after fretting over whether he will successfully raise him right. “And I’ll tell Quentin this: if he feels isolated or weird now, know that at least he’s being raised right. That will only work out for him in the end.” 

The utilization of the future tense allows for a unique way to audit the present day, as there are people and events within the story that mirror current politicians or cultural trends. The ways in which these characters reflect our own world give an immersive feel to the novel—a worldwe can see ourselves in.

The main topic for this discussion remains the anxiety and depression caused by overstimulation due to excessive technology use. Arriving in our admittedly chaotic world, this book allows us to put an essential distance between ourselves and reality. The fictional space gives room to process the thoughts and emotions that may feel overwhelming otherwise—a successful endeavor on author David Schulze’s part. 

I’d recommend this book primarily for a mature adult audience, particularly because of its representation of suicide and other heavy topics. Unplugged invokes deep thought in a powerful dystopian world. While it might feel heavy, it leaves us with hope for the future.

Thank you for reading Chelsey Tucker’s book review of Unplugged by David Schulze! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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