Short, sweet and chock-full of both existential joy and dread, Peter F. Hamilton and Gareth L. Powell’s novella Light Chaser is a hard science thriller set in a utopian future.

A lonely quasi-immortal, Amahle is a light chaser, a spaceship captain who travels the stars and takes advantage of enhanced genetics and lightspeed time-dilation to cross through millenia. Her mission is the dispersion and eventual retrieval of memory collars, fancy futuristic necklaces that record the memories of entire lifetimes: Imagine the 94-part Instagram stories of your most social media addicted-friends, but stretching across a century with fewer grainy, impossible-to-hear concerts. Between planets, Amahle uses these memory collars to experience the lives of those she met on her visits, with only the ship’s AI as her companion. That is, until she realizes that someone is trying to reach out to her through the memory collars, someone capable of communicating across centuries and galaxies.

Despite its short length, Light Chaser plunges into both soul-bound, possibly fated love and universe-spanning conspiracies. Readers who love unique science fiction settings will enjoy how Hamilton and Powell reveal new worlds with each new chapter. Both world building and suspense increase in tandem, complexity and depth building throughout the story while each new reveal amps up the tension.

An ideal read for a flight or a cozy afternoon at home, Light Chaser will make an afternoon seem like minutes.

Dex is a monk of Allalae, the god of small comforts, living in the only city on the planet of Panga. Their city and its satellite villages are the only parts of their world where humans have lived since the Factory Age, which ended when human-built robots suddenly achieved consciousness and asked to be given the freedom to choose their own path through existence. The robots vanished into the wilderness, and the humans have lived in their cities alone ever since.

After Sibling Dex begins ruminating on a recording of evening crickets—a sound that they have never heard in reality, as generations ago, crickets were rendered extinct in areas inhabited by humans—they start to see all the other ways they feel unfulfilled. They decide to become a tea monk, a vocation devoted to helping people in the satellite villages through a combination of good listening and good tea. But after years tending to the villages, Dex’s cricketsong wanderlust remains unfulfilled, and they leave the trails between human habitations behind, striking off into the foreign forests.

Typically, we assume that stories require conflict, and this is particularly true in genre fiction, in which there are worlds to be saved, aliens and elves to be romanced and new technologies and ancient incantations to be discovered. So it is striking that Becky Chambers’ novella A Psalm for the Wild-Built is narratively compelling without anything approximating a typical science fiction conflict. Rather, it is a story of discovery, fueled by the tension of exploring a small slice of an unknown world, like a more tightly constructed Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

In keeping with the rest of Chambers’ work, Psalm is a remarkably personal story set within a much larger saga; in this instance, she sets Sibling Dex’s journey across Panga against a canvas of rapid, large-scale sociocultural evolution. And although Psalm is separate from Chambers’ Wayfarers series, it follows many of the same themes: the strength of platonic bonds, thoughtful engagement with one’s environment and personal growth. It also retains the fundamental hopefulness and aspirational nature of her longer works.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built is the perfect length. If it were shorter, it would be unsatisfying. But if it were longer, its meditative tenor might have become unsustainable, even with Chambers’ sense of whimsy shining through as frequently and naturally as it does. Introspection and humor are perfectly balanced, to the point that these two tones literally bracket the novella: The first line is a shot of humor that admirably sets the mood and grabs the reader’s attention, while the last line is a draught of peaceful gratification reminiscent of one of Dex’s prized brews. This duality is characteristic of Chambers’ work, and A Psalm for the Wild-Built admirably demonstrates how it can translate beautifully into shorter formats.

Psalm also highlights Chambers’ talent for world-building without excessive description. The ubiquity of ox-bikes, which are bicycles aided by electric motors to handle towing loads and climbing hills, speaks more clearly to Panga’s wholesale commitment to sustainable technology than pages of exposition. Similarly, the nature of this world’s six gods—including their separation into Parent Gods representing natural forces (Bosh, the god of the life cycle; Grylom, the god of the inanimate; and Trikilli of the framework of natural laws) and Child Gods representing human creation or action (Allalae of small comforts; Chal, the god of constructs; and Samafar, the god of mysteries)—paints a remarkably detailed picture of the cultural ethos of Panga society. And the tea monks, journeying through satellite villages, providing solace with a kind ear and a warm mug of tea, highlight this culture’s deeply collectivist bent.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a worthy addition to Becky Chambers’ already burgeoning oeuvre. It distills her established interest in moving the grand conflicts of genre fiction to the background, in favor of more inspiring personal stories infused with beauty and optimism.

Looking for a quick bit of adrenaline, a spot of intrigue and the drama of an international sports event? Look no further than the second entry in K.B. Wagers’ NeoG series, Hold Fast Through the Fire.

This second book in the author’s military science fiction series picks up roughly a year after the events of A Pale Light in the Black. The crew of Zuma’s Ghost have achieved a repeat victory at the intermilitary Boarding Games, which was quite an achievement given that the Near-Earth Orbital Guard (NeoG) are looked down upon by other branches of the armed forces. Zuma’s Ghost is facing a change of staff, and everyone is uneasy about what that means for the future of the ship. The prelims for the next year’s Games are fast approaching, and the Ghost has been put on a new task force to investigate potential smuggling issues from off-world settlements.

Nika, still off balance from the loss of his hand, is apprehensive about his new command on Zuma’s Ghost, despite the fact that it was the ship where he cut his teeth as a budding lieutenant. His budding romance with Maxine Carmichael is on the rocks, and to make things worse, he has accepted a secret assignment that will put both Max’s and the crew’s trust to the test. Chae, Zuma’s Ghost’s new pilot, has issues of their own. Forced into the NeoG as part of a plea bargain, they are torn between their growing loyalty to their new crew and the need to keep their fathers safe from intergalactic intrigue. Meanwhile, Max is certain something is desperately wrong with Nika, Chae and their new assignment, but no one will back her up. With Nika effectively gaslighting her to throw her off the scent of his new top-secret mission, Max will have to hew closely to her own instincts if she is going to get the team through the prelims in one piece—let alone their official assignment.

Unlike A Pale Light in the Black, Hold Fast Through the Fire’s central mystery begins unrolling nearly at page one, giving the book a more sinister feel than its predecessor and pulling readers into a labyrinthine plot that surprises and delights. This does take away slightly from the Games aspect of the series, but readers who enjoyed A Pale Light in the Black’s focus on the competition won’t be disappointed. When training for the Games does make its appearance, it still packs the same adrenaline-filled punch of A Pale Light in the Black. Despite the increase in intrigue, Wagers devotes ample attention to the relationships among the crew of Zuma’s Ghost. From the exploration of Jenks’ and Max’s close friendship to Chae’s struggles to fit in with the group to Nika’s battle to accept himself after his accident, Hold Fast Through the Fire is as much about found family and interpersonal relationships as it is about mysteries or the Boarding Games.

This brilliant and entertaining installment in the NeoG universe is a great choice for readers looking for military drama, evocative writing and espionage.