Charlie Jane Anders hurls her latest book, The City in the Middle of the Night, against the boundary of imagination with her strange, beautiful alien world. Anders re-maps modern English onto new science fiction concepts and creatures, and begins the novel with a fictional translator’s note alerting the read that the text of The City in the Middle of the Night will use well known creatures and terms in lieu of the alien, helping to ease the jump into a world wildly different from our own. In theory, this seems wild and confusing but in practice, Anders’ stylistic chocie helps the reader understand the strange lives led on the planet January. Crocodiles are definitely not crocodiles, I would not suggest trying to ride their cats, and most food is likely nothing like its terrestrial counterpart.

One side of January permanently faces the local star and one side faces entirely away. A thin band of land between “day” and “night” provides a barely hospitable patch for the human colonists. In this narrow band of life, humans struggle to regulate their sleep and wakefulness. When inadvertent revolutionary Sophie is banished into the bleak wilderness outside her city, her life is saved by the mysterious aliens who roam January’s surface and what she learns from them may change the planet’s society forever.

Time is a key theme of Anders’ novel—the human settlements visited by the two main characters, Sophie and Mouth, are defined by how they structure life around the endless dusk. Anders masterfully constructs both settings, using her protagonists’ reaction to the flow of time in each city to paint a different kind of claustrophobia. I never thought I would describe a book as painting a story entirely in different shades of anxiety, but Anders nails the feelings of claustrophobia, fear of acceptance, inferiority and loss of identity all in the span of 360 pages.

No character in the story is “likeable,” but all of them are incredibly relatable. The awkward relationship between Sophie and her best friend/love interest, Mouth’s aggressively territorial protection and ownership of her birth culture, and several other character specific conflicts are handled with tact and painful accuracy. My interest in continuing the story hinged completely on the intricate setpieces and the air of mystery surrounding the alien life on January—on both points, Anders overdelivers.

The City in the Middle of the Night does not end cleanly, and perhaps it’s fitting that a story so well grounded in realistic and relatable protagonists ends with such an unsatisfying tilt. In this novel, Anders has lovingly crafted a unique world, and finishes with a wild twist that left me endlessly interested in the next book of the series.

After being violently apprehended by mercenaries, Ada von Hasenberg’s mind is already sorting through her options for escape as she’s dragged along spaceship corridors toward an uncertain end. As the fifth daughter of one of the vast Consortium’s most powerful Houses, she’s managed to survive for two years on the run from her fate as a political pawn destined for a strategic marriage. But even with the skills and resources she’s acquired as a fugitive among the stars, her father’s enormous bounty for her capture has finally brought Ada to heel.

In the dark confines of her captors’ brig, Ada finds her last chance to escape may be hanging in chains on the opposite wall. Notorious across the systems as the Devil of Fornax Zero, her cellmate Marcus Loch represents both certain danger and potential salvation. United by the knowledge that they each face a different kind of doom, they combine talents in a dangerous bid for freedom. Despite an instant physical attraction between them, Ada fears she’s hitching her getaway hopes on a killer, and Loch knows his escape might be complicated by the company of this tempting fugitive scion.

Sprinting from planet to planet on stolen transports as they scrabble for resources and allies, Ada and Loch accidentally discover technology that rival Houses would kill to possess. The pair’s path to freedom evolves as they struggle to unravel the tech’s mysteries before the Consortium erupts into war. In their quest for answers, the revelation of a shared enemy in their pursuer binds Ada and Loch closer. But the vast difference between their individual motives may send their smoldering romance up in flames.

An independent woman with powerful self-knowledge, Ada’s story is free of “rescued princess” tropes that can diminish a space opera. In a refreshing turn, Mihalik doesn’t compromise the action with a constant sexual undercurrent, but rather allows Ada and Loch to revel together in singular moments that perfectly punctuate the novel’s high energy pacing. The erotic elements are written with an economy that lets sex be sex, without an excess of emotional angst or contrived foreplay. The romance is raw, spare and more powerful for it.

Along with her remarkable world building, Mihalik introduces rich supporting characters that are deftly drawn into both the running battles as well as the layered political intrigue. With Ada and Loch’s future unclear and the fate of worlds hanging in the balance, Polaris Rising sets a magnificent stage for Mihalik’s next installment in the Consortium Rebellion trilogy.

If you don’t like being surprised by books, then Kevin A. Muñoz’s debut novel The Post is not the book for you. If, however, you are a fan of adrenaline-packed, post-apocalyptic mystery and adventure, then it might just be right up your alley.

The Post opens in The Little Five, a small, wall-bound community near the ruins of Atlanta, Georgia, ten years after a pandemic wiped out most of the world’s population. The Little Five’s chief of police is Sam Edison, who seeks to create what little order he can in a world where zombie-like creatures called Hollow Heads threaten humanity’s very existence. After two refugees are murdered shortly after seeking asylum in The Little Five, Edison uncovers a human trafficking ring that extends throughout Georgia, one that some residents of The Little Five have secretly been complicit with. When Sam attempts to imprison those sympathizers, the ring takes the mayor’s stepdaughter hostage in retaliation, reminding everyone that there are far more sinister things in the world than mere Hollow Heads.

The Post is a celebration of the sci-fi and action genres, but it is not captive to them. Sam is the epitome of the gruff action hero with a tragic past, but the chief is also deeply sentimental and often naïve, a fact that humanizes parts of the novel that could easily feel callous if presented in the usual cold, analytical tone of many action novels. Sam’s perspective forces readers to reckon with the humanity of those—whether human or Hollow Head—who end up at the other end of the police chief’s gun. And from that perspective we’re forced to consider an important question: Who is less human, the Hollow Head or the man in charge of a trafficking ring? Similarly, while the novel builds a spectacular mystery (How deep does the conspiracy go, and who, exactly, is behind it all?), it doesn’t do so at the expense of the pacing of the novel itself. The result is a perfect blend of action and mystery, part revenge tale and part chase.

It’s worth nothing that many post-apocalyptic novels are described as gritty and visceral, but that Muñoz’s work takes that description to a new level. It deals with some heavy content, including abuse, child death and sex trafficking. The Post doesn’t pull punches when it comes to the fight scenes typical of its genre, either. Sam’s encounters with the Hollow Heads and with fellow humans are visceral to the point of being uncomfortable. And his internal monologue provides a window into the mind of a person who has had to suffer abuse in order to make it as far as the end of the world. However, for readers who choose to take the time to really dig in, The Post is a gem that rewards them for their time. Just when you think you’ve gotten everything figured out, Muñoz hands out a piece of information that you could have never anticipated, but that you realize in retrospect was awaiting you the entire time. The only thing you’ll complain about at the end is that it wasn’t longer.

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Let’s face it: We all want to feel cool. We want to place ourselves in our favorite story and imagine what it would feel like to win. Of course this vision is different for everyone. Yours could be belting out a hit song on stage in front of thousands, or making a last-second buzzer beater with your high school crush looking on or mowing down hordes of zombies before croaking out a one-liner. Here’s the good news about Alex White’s A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy: You get to feel unbelievably cool reading it. This genre-mixing sequel to White’s A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe turns up the action and attitude to 10 and never lets up, making for one hell of a ride.

In a future when humans have conquered the stars, the motley crew of the Capricious has almost no time to rest on their laurels from saving the Galaxy. Nilah, the temperamental yet brilliant racer, and Boots, the world-weary former treasure hunter, team up with the crew to investigate rumors of a galactic cult bent on unlocking the secrets to an ancient and dangerous magic. Determined to thwart the designs of the cult’s mastermind, Nilah, Boots and the rest of the crew must use all the tools at the Capricious’ disposal to infiltrate and combat a group bent on galactic control.

This is a well-developed world with layer upon layer of detail and nuance. Not only does White meticulously script small things like how the crew communicates in combat situations, but they've also managed to build out large-scale geopolitical movements with similar ease. Keep in mind, this is the second book of a series, so this world and these characters have had some time to expand. It can sometimes be a bit daunting when details rush past in the heat of battle, but the payoff is a feeling of being plugged into the action.

Some might say a magic system doesn’t belong in a space opera, but White makes it work. Many characters in this world are able to control specific magical capabilities like hacking electronic systems or reading minds. It’s an interesting way to give the crew a different level of interactivity, both with each other and their adversaries (of which they seem to have many). In one sequence, Nilah is trying to outrun a massive enemy machine, but chooses to try to hack its systems with a magic spell. Readers can look forward to many other small magical moments throughout the narrative.

It’s clear from the get-go that A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy wants to take you on an action-filled adventure across space. But at its core, it’s a story about a close-knit group of people, with both talents and scars, just trying to do the right thing. That’s what had me reading past my bedtime. It’s anything but a bad deal for the reader.

Early on in W. Michael Gear’s Abandoned, a newcomer to the planet Donovan marvels at the beauty of its alien forest: “He could have imagined nothing like it short of a VR holo fantasy come to life. The stuff of dreams and exotic special effects.” Unfortunately, Donovan—named for the first of many humans to die on its surface—bears less resemblance to James Cameron’s Pandora than to its mythological eponym, the holder of a box of unlimited horrors. Flesh-burrowing slugs, tentacled tree-dwelling “nightmares” and snakelike “sidewinders” are all constant threats to the lives of Donovan’s luckless colonizers.

This second installment of Gear’s Donovan series picks up where its predecessor Outpost left off, as Donovan’s settlers adjust to the presence of a group of stranded terrestrial officials who arrived to enforce order and found their means of return less reliable than expected. Talina Perez, the unofficial leader of the settlers, continues to grapple with the mental presence of “her quetzal,” a raptor-like creature whose psychic ghost has haunted her ever since she killed it. Kalico Aguila, the once-unflappable supervisor of the newcomers, longs for her former rank in the totalitarian Earth she left behind, even as she finds herself growing strangely comfortable in her new surroundings. Unbeknownst to either of them, Mark Talbot, a marine lost in Donovan’s lethal wilderness, finds a small community of Donovanians living far from the epicenter, who may have found a way to work with their deadly environment rather than against it.

Gear alternates between these and other threads with flipbook swiftness, successfully maintaining the atmosphere of casual horror that characterized Outpost. (The settlers’ vocabulary for the threats that surround them recalls the Southern U.S. with its slangy deadpan: “gotcha vines” are scarier than they sound.) At the same time, he introduces a new wrinkle to the situation by asking whether the creatures of Donovan are thinkers as well as devourers. Starved summer-action movie enthusiasts would do well to start at the beginning, but established fans of Outpost will find a satisfying expansion of Gear’s perilous universe.

Vanilla ice cream gets a bad reputation. Most would consider it secondary—a side dish to better, richer flavors. But on the contrary, vanilla ice cream does one thing better than anything else: simplify an experience down to its best attributes. Vanilla ice cream is sweet, smooth and, most importantly, tastes exactly as expected, every time.

Richard Baker’s Restless Lightning is a wonderful, delectable bucket of vanilla ice cream, set in an idealistic vision of a future age of space exploration. Baker is not afraid to flood the reader with alien and military lingo, flexing twenty-five years of experience designing tabletop role playing games for industry titan Wizards of the Coast. The dearth of unexplained vocabulary avoids obstructing the flow of the story, instead creating a pseudo-realistic atmosphere a la “Star Trek.”

As the book opens, our hero, Lieutenant Commander Sikander North, finds himself assigned to a backwater station, set up as a diplomatic agent to a race of fishlike beings called Tzoru. The Tzoru are a civilization that has traveled the stars since before humans built pyramids. Tradition and peace have made them a bastion of stability, but the Tzoru way of life is changing faster than they can adapt. Unrest follows, tossing North and his intelligent romantic interest, Dr. Lara Dunstan, into the center of the action.

Combat breaks up the rising political strife, and Baker depicts space combat into a more naval, less Star Wars-style dogfight, experience. Ships line up in formation, forty thousand kilometers away from each other, firing broadside mounted “K-Cannons” at extremely calculated angles. Baker has a knack for writing each encounter in an interesting, dynamic way, without succumbing to bombastic explosive indulgence or boring mechanical descriptions.

Restless Lightning is not going to shake the foundation of science fiction. Instead, amidst a slew of gritty genre offerings like “Game of Thrones” or “Altered Carbon,” this book takes a rose-colored detour to a universe where every character has the best intentions. The most evil character, on a scale from one (least evil) to ten (most evil), ranks at a solid “high school bully” level of malicious intent. Even the main character’s relatively bumbling attitude is endearing; while clearly not suited to be an intelligence officer, North’s struggle to prove his worth is certainly worth cheering for.

In fact, the only weak aspects of this novel are some poorly timed flashback sequences, where Sikander North faces demons of his past. These sequences try to bring depth to North as a protagonist, but unfortunately end up hurting the story’s otherwise smooth plot. These sections are thankfully few and far between.

Four hundred pages later, Baker’s space romp concludes with a space battle, foot chase and an explosion, as it should. Wrapped up in a pretty pink bow, Restless Lightning is a fun fireside read, perfect to break up the stresses of everyday life.

Cixin Liu’s Ball Lightning opens with a young Chen witnessing his parents being incinerated by an unexplained sphere of energy, and then follows Chen as he delves ever deeper into the mysteries surrounding this inscrutable atmospheric phenomenon. His obsession leads him into top-secret laboratories and culminates in the accidental realization of a new form of military deterrence. Along the way, he is forced to question his own internal strife and intractable ethical quandaries by working alongside the beautiful and weapon-obsessed Major Lin Yun and the heedlessly single-minded physicist Ding Yi.

Ball lightning is, in fact, a genuine mystery in contemporary physics and atmospheric science. However, none of the myriad theories proposed to explain it go quite as far as Liu’s speculation, which breaks the tenets of particle physics. Following on the heels of his landmark Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, Ball Lightning establishes Liu as a dominant force in so-called “hard” science fiction, although his more recent novel unfolds over a much more limited spatial and temporal domain. There are no extraterrestrial powers or looming extinction events here, although humanity is once again portrayed as stumbling around a dark and incomprehensible universe it will never truly master.

Rather, Liu focuses on the human and geopolitical side of scientific progress. For all the quantum-mechanical jargon, the real centerpieces of the novel are Chen’s struggle to balance his traumatic past with the need to build a life for himself, and the relationship between scientific progress and military power. Each character’s perspective is inhibited or restricted in some way, from Lin Yun’s monomaniacal ruthlessness to Ding Yi’s intellectual amorality, and each inhibition is grounded in part of that person’s history. Liu populates Ball Lightning with logical, well-crafted individuals and manages to conjure a compelling conflict out of a cast of characters who are all trying to do the right thing. The resulting story is curiously optimistic for a speculative parable about the human propensity for self-destruction. At its core, Ball Lightning is an emotionally compelling and well-written story hiding within a shell of detailed and thoroughly researched quantum mechanics, and it serves as ample evidence for Liu’s pedigree as a storyteller working within the constraints of rigorous speculative fiction.

In the first two books of the Themis Files, Dr. Rose Franklin discovered and rebuilt an alien war machine, nearly doomed the human race to extinction at the hands of an aggressively benevolent alien power, wrenched survival from the jaws of an untimely demise and was accidentally whisked off into space along with a linguist named Vincent, his daughter Eva and General Eugene Govender of the Earth Defense Corps. Now, nine years later, she must save her species again, this time from itself. With her friendships fractured and thrown into a cauldron of eugenics and Cold War imperialism, she must rely on her intelligence, instincts and stubborn unwillingness to accept the world as it is.

Sylvain Neuvel is an engaging and atypical writer. Like the rest of the series, Only Human is told entirely in transcripts of conversations, interviews and news reports, and Neuvel handles this challenging storytelling medium extremely well. The story he tells is interesting and compelling, in large part due to the complexity of the supporting cast. Although the most enigmatic character from the first two novels—his name is never revealed, even when he details his own history—is absent, Vincent’s struggle with the responsibilities of fatherhood, and the blurred moralities of geneticist Alyssa Papantoniou and GRU officer Katherine Lebedev admirably fill that void. Even if the ending has a touch of deus ex machina, this is a story driven by its people more than its plot.

The familiarity of that plot at times makes Only Human the literary equivalent of a cover band of a cover band composed of better musicians than the groups they mimic. It is most reminiscent of Carl Sagan’s Contact or the recent film Arrival, both of which also featured an alien species contacting humanity at some technological milestone, a group of scientists attempting to decode that civilization’s language to construct and use a giant machine, and a realization of the flaws in human nature. But Neuvel’s narrative technique sets the Themis Files apart from its predecessors and demonstrates that even the most well-worn stories can always be told better than before.

Only Human is a fitting conclusion to a well-crafted sci-fi fable of human fallacy. Its plot may cover previously trodden ground, but its narrative technique and character depth make it worth the reader’s time. Just be sure to read the rest of the trilogy first.