Harare Review of Books

352 pages.

Expected publication date: Jan 2, 2024 (Aconyte Books)

SFF.

Mars is always fun, whether terraformed or not. This version was: trains across the surface, domed cities, lakes, the beginnings of grass plains… We can imagine, and we do. Human technology has advanced beyond simple space travel, and we can crash asteroids onto Mars to make water. There’s even a university on this Mars, and competing corporations making the planet liveable—the basis of the story.

I’m not sure if I needed to read the previous books in the series, or if I needed to know the characters from the associated game, but I felt like was dropped into a wholly constructed world where the characters were familiar to everyone else and not to me. That, along with some overwriting (I read the ARC) meant, unfortunately, that I kept falling out of the narrative. This shouldn’t really have happened, because the characters in the book are likeable, and the tension builds up nicely, with a decent resolution at the end. So, Shores of a New Horizon perhaps deserves a higher rating than I’m going to give it.

Thank you very much to NetGalley and to Aconyte Books for access.