I’ve read several Hess books and every time I’m just reminded of how good Hess is at writing. It makes me excited to go into Hess’s other books. I like how I’m never bored or get so annoyed with characters that I want to immediately dnf. I can’t wait to get to the next chapter, to lose myself in the book, his writing. I’m so happy to have found Hess last year and I need to get to World Running Down and the other books!

I’ve said multiple times on here that I’ve been struggling these past few years with science fiction. Not because I don’t like the genre, just that most of the books are difficult and I can’t get myself to read them like other books. But I’m slowly getting back to sci-fi and I’ve found that Al Hess definitely is helping that. Very slowly, but we’re getting there. That’s largely due to the good writing, characters, and world-building – and it’s not even limited to this book! Basically every book I’ve read from Hess makes me want to get back to the science fiction genre as a whole.

I immediately liked Denver and Ezra from the get-go – which I’m always happy about when I read a book. I don’t mind getting to know characters but I am always a bit happier when I like them from the start. They’re both funny, their banter was great, and their romance was so sweet. They cared about each other and treated each other well. If Hess wants to bring them back for a sequel or a novella (as he loves novellas), I’ll be all for it. I definitely wanted to spend more time with them and will easily reread the book for them. The supporting characters were also very interesting. Trevor and Taisha grew on me until I liked them too, they were good and added nicely to the rest of the character line-up. They also played off each other quite nicely and that speaks well to the author’s writing.

I do know that for sci-fi I like weird creatures or aliens so I think that’s why I liked this so much. Hess wasn’t afraid to really lean in to the weirdness of the book and plot and it worked well! Add the mystery element and Denver trying to make everyone believe him and everyone refusing to – I wanted to keep on reading.