No one likes or trusts SecUnits, especially a SecUnit, and most especially Murderbot who hacked it's own governing module and now has to worry about detection as well as rogue SecUnits. Technically, it's a rogue SecUnit itself. which are usually easily identified by the trail of dead bodies but before it could start killing helpless humans it was distracted by the entertainment serials it downloaded. Turns out it would rather watch soap operas while going through the motions of its job than kill the clients it's contracted to protect. Not that it's never tempted, humans are definitely irritating. Murderbot's narrative is cynical, ironic, sarcastic, and occasionally touching. Its adventures are full of action but also include a running commentary on the foibles of human nature. Hence, the irony and sarcasm. 

The Commune series has been a pretty good one so far. It has focused on a group of characters struggling to survive in the mountains of Wyoming after a Coronal Mass Ejection destroyed society as we know it. The series has been a gritty apocalyptic tale, and sometimes it's been quite brutal, but it has always been centered in realism. I appreciate the straight up story telling that doesn't rely on zombies or alien invasions to challenge the main characters. Speaking of those characters, I've been rooting for them to make it for 4 books now, so I eagerly picked up book 5 to see what was in store for them now. To my surprise, those characters are nowhere to be found. This book is centered in Washington, D.C. so it feels more like the start of a new series than a continuation of an old one. Does it hold up or is this just a money grab that takes advantage of the series name?

The extraordinarily wealthy Tesla Crane and her husband are incognito on their honeymoon cruise. Not only did she inherit the company responsible for Earth's telecommunications, but she was a brilliant robotic engineer whose career ended in tragedy, leaving her broken in both mind and body. A few days after the ship begins its journey from the Moon to Mars the newlyweds interrupt a murder outside their cabin. Being a famous detective, her husband chases the fleeing murderer while Tesla waits for medical help with the victim. Unfortunately, the security chief arrests Tesla's husband as the easiest suspect ,so it's up to Tesla to make them see reason. When reason fails she sets out to find the murderer herself. The really strange thing? Another body has turned up in the waste recycling system but everyone aboard is accounted for. Have there been two murders? And who is this spare man?

This series started a little slowly 9 years ago with Terms of Enlistment, but it has been going strong since then and rarely disappoints. This one picks up right where the last one left off with the NCS Washington stranded in a sunless system deep behind enemy lines. Winding up here was an accident and they have no way back home, so the first order of business is establishing a source of water and then a source of protein. There is a promising source of water, but protein is likely to be a more difficult proposition. So Major Grayson takes his special tactics team onto a moon with signs of life in the hopes of discovering a source of food, and not a Lanky presence. Of course, this is a military Sci-Fi series so Grayson's hopes are shattered when a substantial Lanky presence is discovered on the moon. Then one thing leads to another...

​​​​​​​The Firefly series of books is the closest we will ever get to living in a world where the TV series wasn't canceled after just one season. Each book feels like a new episode of the show and Life Signs is the best one so far. Inara has not been aboard Serenity for a few books now and we finally find out why. Inara is dying. She has a terminal illness, Kiehl’s Myeloma, which is an incurable form of cancer and she has little time left. Therefore, she finally decides to let the crew of Serenity in on her secret and say goodbye. Of course this is devastating news to Mal and hard for him to accept. So hard, in fact, that he is willing to risk his own life, and the lives of his crew, on an impossible mission to save her. Mal decides that the crew needs to travel to an Alliance prison planet and break out a disgraced scientist on the slim chance that he might be able to help Inara. Pure madness.

Who is Nona? No one, least of all Nona herself, actually knows who's soul resides in the body originally belonging to Harrowhark. Her memory begins six months ago on planet dominated by different rebel factions and threatened by one of the Resurrection Beasts. Her friends, Pyrrha Dve (in the still living body of the dead Lyctor Gideon the First) and Camilla Hect, (who is sharing her body with her dead necromancer Palamedes Sextus), have only told her that they believe her to be one of two friends. Their supposed allies from the rebel group Blood of Eden are only allowing her to live because they hope her soul belongs to Gideon Nav who they need to open the Locked Tomb. Nona's personality is cheerful and completely innocent with only occasional flashes of what might be either the irreverent Gideon or serious Harrow. As Nona struggles to make sense of the events around her while her friends analyze every bit of her dreams she can recall in the hopes they are the key to unlocking her soul.

Most people have to wait until they're seventeen to enlist in the military but due to the zombie apocalypse Faith and Sophia Smith find themselves officers at ages 13 and 15. As the Wolf Squadron fleet begins searching for the resources necessary to manufacture a vaccine for the zombie virus, both sisters discover that there is more to being an officer than shooting things. With an assault on Guantanamo Bay in the works and a mission that's literally from out of this world, it's time to move past the sibling rivalry and learn to work together. After two books of Smith vs Zombie mayhem, Ringo keeps the formula fresh by dividing the focus more evenly between Faith and Sophia and pushing the characters out of their comfort zones.

The newest installment in the Hell Divers series has the action spread across multiple locations: the Vanguard Islands, Panama, and Australia. Since King Xavier decided in the last book that the Vanguard Islands were dying, he has been dispersing his people to try to find a solution. He is hoping they will either find resources to help in the short term or a potential new home for the long term. The legend of the Coral Castle is mocked by many, but X thinks it is real and he plans to find the mythical sanctuary. In his mind, the only way to save humanity is the find a new home before the scarcity of life in the Vanguard Islands triggers a war, and the Coral Castle is the best lead he has for finding such a place. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with him, and the various human factions are set to start that war as soon as he leaves to search for his fantasy home.

The Smith family, and the few stalwarts of the Wolf Squadron, continue their campaign to reclaim the Atlantic Ocean from the zombified humans one ship at a time. So far they have pulled a few hundred people from small ships and lifeboats. Then the difficulty of rescuing those trapped on a superliner cruise ship compels what remains of the USA's government to take action. They authorize a submarine to provide necessary equipment and in the process reveal that they have been shadowing the ragtag fleet for a few weeks. The survival of a few submarines is good news, but they have an ulterior motive. Without a vaccine the thousands of crew members on those subs will die. 

In the small town of Black Mountain, North Carolina they are finally starting to piece things back together after the EMP strike of two years ago. John Masterson has led the town in defeating multiple enemies, and now they even have a little bit of electrical power available, though it must be rationed carefully. John's wife has a child on the way and there is an underlying hope to everything going on. Even though the United States will never be the same, it might now be possible to carve out a reasonable existence. That all changes when a stranger arrives on the fringe of the community looking for John. This person used to be the aide of one of John's former military commanders, General Bob Scales, but unfortunately he dies before John can chat with him. He did, however, deliver a possible warning before he passed, that another EMP attack could be on the way, and this one delivered by what is supposedly our own government.