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.

If you’re an employee of Parthenope Enterprises, there is no such thing as privacy. Your movements around whatever desolate space station you occupy are tracked constantly, and the only place you aren’t under video surveillance is in the comfort of your own quarters. Or so security officer Hester Marley believes. But when an old friend dies under mysterious circumstances after sending her an untraceable message, Hester is forced to reexamine her certainty about the Parthenope panopticon. In order to solve his murder—and indeed, in order to survive her investigation—Hester will need to reconsider not just her views of life within the company, but also what she knows of her own tragic past.

Kali Wallace's Dead Space is tense and kinetic. Wallace masterfully dances back and forth between two speeds, using them to guide us towards a destination that feels both surprising and inevitable. In some scenes, Wallace lingers over interrogations as Hester and her investigative crew dissect every word and facial expression of the dead man’s fellow crew members at the asteroid mine where he worked and died. In others, the narration careens from one impact to another, sometimes literally, as the body count on the mining station continues to mount.

Because it’s written in first person, the book centers almost claustrophobically on Hester. At first glance, Dead Space’s protagonist is not exactly dynamic. Hester is competent but miserable, having been forced into indentured servitude by medical debt from injuries she sustained in a terrorist attack. In the moment of the attack, her dream—to explore the moon of Titan as part of a team looking for extraterrestrial life—was ripped away from her, replaced by a sobering reality of imperfect prosthetics and a security job ill-befitting an artificial intelligence expert. At least, that’s the view of her we see initially.

Yet as bad goes to worse in the investigation, we witness Hester bloom into someone who is passionate, curious and fiercely intelligent. Dead Space is as much about processing grief as it is about solving a murder. The events on the mining station force Hester to fully reckon with her loss even as they push her to her limits, giving an intensely human throughline to a story that might otherwise lose focus during its many twists and turns.

The book opens with a bloody description of a body modification surgery gone horribly wrong, and descriptions of gore only escalate from there. But Dead Space gives readers who can stomach such things an amazing gift: a character-driven thriller full of secrets, mayhem and plenty of explosions that will leave them guessing from beginning to end.

It has been two months since Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass foiled an attempted military coup on Teixcalaan—though they may have started a war to do it. Dzmare is back on her native Lsel Station, among her people but unsure if she still belongs there. Seagrass has a desk job; a prestigious one, to be sure, but a bore all the same, so when she lucks into a not-quite-legal chance for an adventure, and one that will bring her and Dzmare together again, she leaps at the chance. As diplomatic envoys to an uncommunicative alien armada, they must contend with a host of horrors, from a fleet of screaming, ship-eating aliens and deadly fleet politics to an infestation of cats and a lack of non-clichéd poetic imagery. And if they survive their privations, both military and literary, it is not at all clear whether either of them can truly go home again.

In her award-winning debut novel, A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine tackled the problem of communicating between cultures in a shared lingua franca, detailed an empire at war with itself and told of an intrigue involving Lsel Station’s memory-preserving imago-machines and one man’s quest for immortality. In A Desolation Called Peace, all of those themes have evolved in complexity, diving deeper into an intrigue about the very nature of life and death. The central cast is as appealing as ever, and the cats, described as “very friendly, if—sharp, on the ends” and “puddles of space without stars” are a delightful addition. 

Martine’s debut showcased her consummate skill and perfect blend of narrative, humor and world-building; her second effort highlights her thematic ambition, and her abilities as a writer are more than equal to the task. Desolation is the kind of book that crouches in your mind, waiting for a quiet moment. It is hard to read slowly, but demands to be savored, lest you miss some of the cleverest and most elegant foreshadowing in modern science fiction. Redolent with echoes of Frank Herbert’s Whipping Star, Iain M. Banks’s Excession and screen epics such as Arrival and Ronald D. Moore’s “Battlestar Galactica,” it nevertheless carries its own distinctive melody.

Arkady Martine’s first book was a deserving Hugo winner. Her second might eclipse it.

Though the planet of Iskat is cold and gray, with ferocious predatory avian species adorning the frozen environment, Everina Maxwell’s debut novel, Winter’s Orbit, is anything but frigid. This queer science fiction romance astounds not only through its believable, multilayered character development, but also in the eons of intergalactic political and cultural history that Maxwell weaves into a 400-page novel.

Kiem Tegnar is a playboy prince of Iskat in his mid-20s who would rather party until daybreak, drink at carnivals and cause a scene than deal with anything remotely resembling political responsibility. But his life is thrown into disarray when his grandmother, the Emperor, informs him that he will fulfill his lifelong duty as a minor noble by getting married the following day. Not only will this shock to the Emperor’s least favorite grandchild disrupt his hedonistic lifestyle, but his arranged marriage will be to Jainan nav Adessari, widower of Kiem's cousin Taam, whom Jainan still mourns but Kiem barely remembers. Their marriage will preserve the political alignment between Iskat and one of its seven vassal planets, Jainan's homeworld of Thea.

Suddenly thrust into a diplomatic role, Prince Kiem must navigate new etiquette to save face and maintain the relationship between Iskat and Thea. With the vassal contracts to be renewed soon, both Kiem and Jainan find themselves in awkward and uncomfortable situations as the relentless press hassles them for gossip about their impromptu marriage and a faceless Auditor comes to observe the veracity of their union—and thus, the veracity of the link between the planets. But while Kiem and Jainan share a common political goal, their strikingly different personalities pose challenges as they become a unit.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Everina Maxwell on the freedom of a "queernorm" speculative world.

Beneath Kiem’s slightly callous, celebrity exterior lies a loyal, likable potential leader with a strong sense of morality. Maxwell uses Kiem’s wry sense of humor to convey his insecurities and anxiety about his new position and his relationship with Jainan. There’s no question that he is attracted to his cousin’s handsome, highly educated widower, but because of both formal customs and Kiem's own internal compass, he feels guilt, shame and confusion as a newlywed married to a man he'd only just met. As he picks up on the Iskan government’s condescending treatment of Jainan’s fellow Theans and uncovers evidence that his cousin’s death might not have been accidental, Kiem is filled with a strong, genuine desire to help the mysterious man he has been forced to marry—and who has been forced to marry him.

Winter’s Orbit fits into the romance genre just as much as it does science fiction, and its central relationship develops and flourishes in a world devoid of homophobia. On Iskat and its vassal planets, characters wear certain tokens to indicate binary or nonbinary gender identities, and relationships, even royal ones, range from monogamous, polyamorous, queer (or not) and religious (or not). As Kiem adapts to his new relationship, he must also learn more about Thean customs and traditions if he is to truly understand and empathize with his new spouseand become both a good husband and nobleman.

Maxwell expertly weaves relatable issues—cultural tensions, strained family dynamics, relationship struggles and government and media corruption—into a stunning outer space setting where readers will be just as invested in Kiem and Jainan as they are in unraveling the dangerous mysteries afoot in Iskat. With its dark, dry humor and its unforgettable depictions of bereavement, heartbreak and new love, Winter’s Orbit is hopefully the start of much more to come from Everina Maxwell.

We Could be Heroes by Mike Chen is a refreshing, light take on the superhero origin story. Two misfits, Jamie and Zoe, become unlikely friends when they meet in a support group for amnesiacs and realize that they’ve both had the same strange experience. Both woke up one day with no memories of their former life, but with extraordinary new powers.

The story is set in the fictional city of San Delgado, which could easily be any major city in the United States. This fictional location helps Chen bring a grounded, everyday quality to what could have been a larger-than-life tale. Small, funny details like awful neighbors and Jamie and Zoe’s support group allow readers to slip seamlessly into the shoes of his otherwise remarkable protagonists.

Despite their powers, Zoe and Jamie are normal, friendly humans who want little more than to be happy, and their heartfelt interactions and charming dialogue are the backbone of We Could Be Heroes. Zoe is driven to learn more about her past and who she was, while Jamie merely wants to retire to an island with his cat, Normal. Together, they save lives, learn about themselves and try to defeat the bad guys. Jamie and Zoe genuinely care about each other, and while their mutual trust certainly takes a while to build, their genuine respect and love for each other will slap a smile on even the gloomiest of readers.

Speaking of love, there is zero romance in this book (just like this reviewer’s cold, cynical heart appreciates), and it’s for the best. The lack of romance between main characters or with side characters allows Chen to focus wholly on his two protagonists. If any other subplots or characters stole the spotlight, this story would have felt rushed or poorly paced. Instead, We Could be Heroes is a well written, elegantly structured tale of joy and friendship.

Stina Leicht's Persephone Station brings together a crew of lovable misfits to wage war against a hostile corporate entity. Leicht takes influence from cyberpunk novels and Star Trek, pulling together an action-packed plot focused on normal people (well, as normal as you can be in this world) doing their best to defend the innocent and protect the weak.

Persephone Station gathers narrative speed with all the grace of a snowball rolling downhill in an old cartoon, sliding and bounding from the moment our heroes find themselves in over their heads, which happens almost immediately. Rosie, a nonbinary crime lord with a heart of gold, employs Angel and her retired, revivified (think basically cyberpunk zombie soldiers, and yes, they are as cool as that sounds) merc crew to protect the titular planet’s pacifist alien race. Leicht’s universe has a “Prime Directive”-style edict—specifically, humans can’t colonize worlds where sentient species are already present. But since Persephone Station’s native population, the Emissaries, do not wish to be discovered, Rosie and Angel must work together to protect them as best they can, eventually teaming up with the mysterious Kennedy Liu to safeguard the Emissaries from being exploited by the Serrao-Orlov Corporation.

Leicht has crafted a fully imagined world that functions like a living, breathing member of the story. Various aspects of the world beyond Persephone bleed into the story, but never in a way that feels cheap or unearned. Angel’s cybernetic augments feel at home next to pulse lasers, spaceships and an internet that spans a galaxy. Leicht only flirts with the darker tones of a typical cyberpunk setting, focusing much more emphatically on the camaraderie between characters and their ever-present pursuit of truth and hope. There are no dark twists in the 500 or so pages of Persephone Station; instead, Leicht spends her time investing the reader in her characters’ plight.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Stina Leicht on her fascinating alien race and writing her first science fiction novel.

Rosie, Angel and Kennedy’s interactions are rife with earnestness and charm. Each character loves and cares for their friends and their dialogue feels natural and genuine. Their wins are reader wins, and their losses resonate harshly with the reader. The highly likeable characters help balance Persephone Station’s erratic pacing. Since the plot takes place over the course of a week or so, even several hours of skipped time can be jarring. There were several moments where I needed to flip back a few pages simply to make sure I had not missed a key story beat.

Despite these moments, Leicht draws her story to a beautiful and bittersweet ending. After crafting such heartfelt attachment to its characters, Persephone Station gifts the reader with a positive, entertaining story of grit and determination in which the will to do good prevails despite great cost.

From its title, David Wong’s second installment in the adventures of heiress Zoey Ashe promises an unforgettable, bizarre and brain-bending storyline, and it does not disappoint.

Wong’s futuristic sci-fi whodunit reintroduces readers to now 23-year-old Zoey, whose chaotic life is anything but boring. Having inherited a fortune in less-than-savory businesses from her estranged, deceased father—pseudonym “Arthur Livingston”—her former existence in a Colorado trailer park with her smelly feline friend, Stench Machine, and her single, eccentric mother, Melinda, feels like a lifetime away.

In this sequel to Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, set in the lawless futuristic city of Tabula Ra$a, Wong reprises the witty, satirical narration that readers that have come to expect from his work. In this world, rules are constantly shifting, rich people are to bodyguards as sharks are to remoras, and hedonistic temptations abound, from gaudy, animated neon advertisements and all-night Cuddle Inns and sex theaters, to brothels and extreme virtual reality experiences.

Wong so completely immerses readers in this vivid, technothrilling setting that new characters feel like old friends, and Zoey is as lovable as ever as she tries to be a “normal” goth-grunge, Halloween-loving party girl and cat mom while still running a criminal empire. Zoey has inherited a team of professionals from her crime kingpin father: the charming, cowboy hat-donning Texan, Budd; the beautiful, lithe and lethal Echo Ling; and the fiercely loyal and stoic sniper Wu. But the public and, more importantly, the internet seem to loathe Zoey, with her unconventional appearance and her inheritance. At this point, she’s escaped more than a few hostage and assassination attempts.

When an animated, organless corpse arrives on her doorstep and accuses her of murder, Zoey and her team must battle rabid conspiracy theorists, vulturistic and violent vigilante journalists and even an ominous secret society to clear her name and unearth the truth. Through it all, tensions grow among the underground crime leaders, and the Unrest Index of Tabula Ra$a continually rises.

Wong’s sequel is a high-energy and flawless segue into a new episode of Zoey’s life and easily proves itself to be a compelling standalone work. This wholly original world feels like a fever dream, with shiny gadgets like color-changing convertibles, mechanized superhuman implants and a coveted 3D printer that can craft both powerful weapons and head-turning Halloween costumes at a moment’s notice. Wong’s biting commentary on social media, internet trolls, fandoms gone wrong, incel culture, mansplaining and the ethics of genetic engineering—not to mention the cyberbulling and harassment that Zoey endures as a plus-size woman with a walk-in closet full of band T-shirts and two missing teeth in her smile—is a testament to the power of pop fiction. His combination of captivating character development, sci-fi satire and dark, clever humor is a revelation.

The future we face under climate change is often presented as a progression of sterile facts: The world’s oceans are likely to rise by X meters by the year 2100. Global average temperatures are going to increase by Y degrees over the next 30 years. There will be Z millions of climate refugees seeking new homes. The problem with these numerical descriptions of a hellishly hot future is that they often ignore the human toll of climate change. Not so in Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest book, The Ministry for the Future. Robinson’s view of climate change is deeply personal, inescapably human and utterly horrifying.

The Ministry for the Future frames the story of humanity’s future around the formation and future-history of an international organization of the same name. Established in 2025, its mission is straightforward: It must advocate for the future of the Earth and the creatures that make their homes here. What this means, in practice, is trying to mitigate—and bear witness to—the human toll of catastrophic climate change. Robinson structures his story as a series of oral histories, eyewitness accounts of a changing world. While this technique isn’t new, it is unique in both the number of different accounts Robinson chooses to follow and the type. Robinson doesn’t focus on the macro or the micro; he focuses on it all. While the novel opens with the account of the sole survivor of a killer heat wave in Lucknow, India, it doesn’t stay there. It ranges from international politics (Is geoengineering a viable solution? What would happen if a single country unilaterally decided to engineer a solution to rising temperatures?) to the stories of individuals dealing with PTSD, forced migration and heat waves, among other things.

The Ministry for the Future isn’t really a book for folks who are used to (or longing for) grand space operas and tales of cosmic exploration and action. Although Robinson’s prose is evocative, the book isn’t exactly exciting. Robinson’s writing is sparse, and what plot that exists within the pages of this book is often obscured by its structure. Much like the future, The Ministry for the Future doesn’t lay itself out in a straight and orderly fashion.

Despite its occasionally dry tone, Kim Stanley Robinson’s take on our future is one of the most moving pieces of climate fiction written in a very long time. Well researched and beautifully written, The Ministry for the Future is a thought-provoking (and sometimes even hopeful) read for anyone looking to the future and wondering what’s coming next.

An interplanetary bureaucracy faces a moral dilemma in Erin K. Wagner’s An Unnatural Life, a novella that prioritizes thoughtful questions over dramatic plot points. An Unnatural Life focuses on answering exactly one question: Who, or what, is guilty of murder? Aiya, a lawyer living on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, takes the case of an android named 812-3, who has been convicted of killing a human worker. Were 812-3 human, the case would certainly have been labeled a mistrial and would be liable for appeal. Aiya takes on the role of representing him, applying for appeal on his behalf even though androids do not have equal rights under the law on Europa.

Wagner lets the story unfold in a passive, third-person voice, creating an atmosphere more reminiscent of nonfiction and biography than science fiction. Events play out as if a neutral party were merely reading the thoughts of Aiya, or calmly dictating her actions. As a result, no moral question or dilemma is resolved or answered by the narrative; the reader is left to ponder these questions themselves.

This documentarian voice allows Wagner to paint with the brush of a journalist, depicting events clearly and factually. Feelings of disgust, fear or suspense in the reader are neutralized in favor of thoughtful inquiry measured with reasonable skepticism. Similar to most nonfiction explorations of modern events, An Unnatural Life eschews a normal, tidy ending for one that is more realistic. While Aiya’s emotional and social journey is certainly not uneventful, Wagner’s nihilistic take on the state of humanity does not leave room for much to change by the end of the story.

Perhaps due to its placement beyond the asteroid belt, or its entirely icy nature, Europa serves as an excellent backdrop for Wagner’s stoic and cold novella. While Mars or Venus may appeal to the uninitiated, Europa has always had a distinctly alien, otherworldly feel. The choice of setting also facilitates a likely setup for a sequel: a series of short, first-person radio logs that document an explorer’s journey into the unknown areas of Europa. This subplot gives the novella an interesting cadence as it bounces the reader between suspenseful exploration and courtroom politicking, sometimes within the space of two paragraphs.

An Unnatural Life will appeal to the philosopher within its audience, those who want to cozy up and consider a lightly challenging moral and ethical dilemma.

Fresh and funny, Hench exposes the inner lives of superheroes, villains and sidekicks with all their mundane vulnerabilities.

Anna Tromedlov is a struggling, hapless temp who “henches” for evil villains. When she is badly injured during a battle between the forces of good and evil, she finds herself broke, broken and unemployed. So she does what she does best: runs the numbers to discover the extent of damage caused by those supposed do-gooders. Anna’s database goes viral, and she is soon employed by Leviathan, a mysterious and powerful villain who uses Anna’s expert skills in collecting and collating data to bring down superheroes by the numbers. They’re targeting one superhero in particular: Supercollider, who caused Anna’s downfall and, ultimately, her rise.

Familiar tropes are turned upside down in this fast-paced caper, and no one is perfect. Superheroes carelessly cause damage while fighting for justice. The villains are more efficient and professional than the so-called “good guys.” Even the downtrodden Anna, who becomes a dangerous asset when she wields her database skills, continues to wrestle with self-doubt despite her success.

Toronto writer and journalist Natalie Zina Walschots deftly choreographs the dynamic skirmishes between superheroes and villains, who sport suitably fabulous names like the Electric Eel, Glassblower, Quantum and Auditor. (Guess who gets the latter title.) While there is some bloodshed and gore, the attention falls mostly on the often humorous dialogue and commentary by Anna and her cohorts. Wry observations about the corporate world, our litigious society and how our chaotic lives are ruled by dry-cleaning tickets and family obligations are sprinkled throughout.

Rousing and irreverent, Hench is an entertaining adventure that challenges the stereotypes of heroes, villains and the humble temp.