#Review - Aliens Like Us by Gini Koch #SyFy #Fantasy

Series: Katherine "Kitty" Katt # 17
Format: 541 pages, Kindle Edition
Release Date: April 7, 2026
Publisher: Ginger Blue Publishing
Source: Amazon 
Genre: SyFy, Fantasy

It’s not easy being a Woman of the Multiverse, but Kitty’s definitely the Megalomaniac Girl for the job.

After a mad dash around the galaxy, saving the day in various important ways and expanding the Annocusal Empire left and right, all Kitty & Company want to do is go home. But that’s not in the particular hand they’ve been dealt. On their way to Alpha Four to make Emperor Alexander feel like he hasn’t been left out, Kitty and eleven others are tossed into a different universe at the snap of some very powerful fingers.

They’re not sent to just any universe, either. They’re in the Steampunk Universe, and things are very different there – and not just due to the technological divergence between Kitty’s universe and this one. Starting with them being surrounded by ships that are redefining the term “unfriendly” – because this universe has been embroiled in galactic war for centuries.

Friends are enemies, enemies are friends, people alive in one universe are dead in this one, and vice versa is old news for Kitty, but new news for everyone else with her. The Victorian Era still reigns supreme here, meaning everyone’s attitudes are a lot less free and easy than Kitty’s used to.

But the biggest discovery is the worst one – instead of being Kitty’s husband and a total hero, the Jeff Martini in this universe is an evil murderer who’s aligned his entire empire with the Z’porrah, and that means the good guys are losing...

Aliens Like Us is the 17th installment in author Gini Koch's Katherine "Kitty" Katt series. The book is a long-awaited, high-energy return to the series that delivers the signature mix of snarky action, multiverse chaos, ensemble antics, and steamy-ish sci-fi romance fans expect—while shifting into a full steampunk alternate universe. The story picks up after the cliffhanger of Aliens Abroad (2018). The gap was substantial—roughly eight years—so the book’s arrival felt like a major event for dedicated readers. 

Kitty Katt-Martini and a core group of eleven others are en route after expansive galactic adventures when they are abruptly tossed into a different universe—the Steampunk Universe. Technology diverges sharply (steam, mechanics, and Victorian-era sensibilities dominate instead of the more familiar tech of their home reality), a centuries-long galactic war rages, alliances are inverted, and people who are alive (or dead) in one universe often occupy the opposite status in this one. 

The most jarring discovery involves an alternate Jeff Martini who is an evil murderer aligned with the Z’porrah, putting the “good guys” in a losing position. Friends and enemies swap roles, attitudes are more constrained by the prevailing cultural norms, and Kitty must navigate this hostile environment with limited resources while the fate of multiple realities hangs in the balance. The book functions as the first half of a larger arc (followed by Aliens Like Them), ending on a “to be continued” note rather than a fully self-contained resolution. 

Kitty’s rapid-fire, pop-culture-infused narration, problem-solving style, and “Megalomaniac Girl” energy drive the story. The large supporting cast (family, friends, aliens, hybrids, and more) gets plenty of moments, including interactions involving the younger generation and the ever-present adorable side elements (Poofs and similar). Multiverse versions create fun “what if” tension without completely abandoning established dynamics. 

The steampunk overlay—Victorian social attitudes colliding with Kitty’s modern/alien-enhanced sensibilities, plus ongoing interstellar war—gives fresh texture to the usual conspiracies, superpowers, politics, and high-stakes fights. Koch continues her talent for packing in intrigue, shifting allegiances, and chaotic set pieces while keeping the tone predominantly fun and propulsive. It is very much a series book. 

New readers will be lost; the enormous cast, ongoing plot threads, and accumulated lore make starting at book 1 (Touched by an Alien) essentially mandatory. Aliens Like Us succeeds as a fan-pleasing continuation that leans hard into multiverse exploration and a distinctive steampunk aesthetic while preserving the fast, funny, relationship-driven core that made the Alien/Katherine “Kitty” Katt series popular. 

It is not the tightest or most self-contained entry, and the long wait plus incomplete arc will test patience for some, but for readers who love Kitty’s chaotic competence, the sprawling found family, and ever-escalating cosmic weirdness, it delivers the goods and leaves them eager for December 2026’s follow-up Aliens Like Them. If you’ve followed Kitty this far, this is the reunion most were hoping for—messy, energetic, and very much in the spirit of the books that came before. The good guys (and the snark) are still fighting; the universe just got a lot more complicated.

*Note* There are actually two covers to this book. One was originally planned for release under DAW; the other is being released by Ginger Blue Publishing. I honestly like the original, but have included both to support the author. 

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#Review - Red Star Rebels by Amie Kaufman #YA #SyFy

Series: Standalone
Format: 288 pages, Hardcover
Release Date: February 10, 2026
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Source: Publisher
Genre: Young Adult / Science Fiction

It’s 2067, and the Graves family has transformed Mars from a lifeless rock into a chaotic patch of settlements. You can buy a one-way ticket to a new life--if you're rich.

Enter Hunter Graves, the handsome, ambitious grandson of the man who settled Mars. With spectacularly bad timing, Hunter arrives at the United Nations base just as an emergency evacuation sends everyone scurrying for safety. Except he’s left behind. Uh-oh.  

Also stranded: Cleo, a sharp-tonged stowaway with no intention of dying today, and even less patience for overconfident trust fund boys. But the enemy of your enemy might just help you survive, so here we are.

It turns out the evacuation is just a cover for the mercenaries who come next, and the plan to blow up the base--and every trace of their crime--in eight hours.

Now, Hunter and Cleo have one shot to stop the explosion, escape alive, and deal with the inconvenient fact that they're falling for each other.

The clock is ticking.

Amie Kaufman, the author of the Illuminae Files and Aurora Cycle, delivers a standalone YA sci-fi thriller with Red Star Rebels. The story features two very different characters: Hunter Graves, who comes from a family that first colonized Mars, and Cleo, a stowaway who ran away from bill collectors thanks to her mother. In 2067, Mars is no longer a barren rock but a fractured world of settlements dominated by corporate power, largely thanks to the influential Graves family. 

Hunter Graves, the ambitious and privileged grandson of Mars' primary settler, arrives at a United Nations base at the worst possible moment: an emergency evacuation leaves him stranded. He's not alone—Cleo, a resourceful stowaway with a criminal edge and zero tolerance for entitlement, is also stuck behind. What starts as a survival scramble quickly escalates when they uncover a deadly plot: mercenaries intend to destroy the base (and cover their tracks) in a ticking eight-hour window. 

Forced into an uneasy alliance, Hunter and Cleo must combine his tech-savvy software skills with her hands-on hardware expertise to outmaneuver the threats, sabotage the plan, and escape alive. Oh, and navigate the inconvenient spark of attraction igniting between them amid the chaos. Hunter starts as the archetypal "trust fund boy"—handsome, confident, but burdened by family expectations—while Cleo is sharp-tongued, street-smart, and fiercely independent. 

Their initial clashes are hilarious and charged with tension, evolving naturally into mutual respect and deeper connection as they confront each other's vulnerabilities and misconceptions about their worlds. The Mars setting is richly imagined, highlighting inequality and corporate greed without overwhelming the plot. Themes of power, resistance, and who gets to claim the stars add thoughtful layers, echoing real-world debates on space exploration. 

Even though this book is a standalone, the characters' arcs a touch surface-level due to the breakneck pace, and a few twists lean predictable. The ending satisfies but could benefit from a brief epilogue for more closure, and world-building, while effective, leaves room for deeper exploration.

1.

Hunter

8 hours remaining

The guy from Mars didn't know I was coming.

"Hi?" he says, with an upward inflection that asks who I am, what I want, and why I'm standing here when he's already checked everybody off his list. I can tell he doesn't like loose ends. Messes up his filing system, probably.

He's guarding the airlock with a tablet in one hand, wearing a United Nations jumpsuit and a confused expression. I'm not sure what kind of formal processing I expected, but this is an underwhelming way to arrive on a new planet.

This guy is here to welcome diplomats and corporate officers from all over Earth and the orbital colonies before they shuttle down to the surface. You'd think the UN would have laid on whatever flourishes they could manage for our arrival, but instead it's me and one nervous bureaucrat called . . . I squint at his badge. Nathan, apparently.

"This is the shuttle, right?" I prompt. "All aboard for Mars?"

"I thought I had everyone already," Nathan says, frowning at his tablet, then looking up at me with a narrowed gaze, as if I might be a hitcher. "What's your destination?"

I unleash a smile on him. Never hurts, right? "I'm here to transfer to the GravesUP compound."

"Then nobody at GravesUP knows you're coming. I've logged in everyone expected for this shuttle."

True, Nathan. My mother and sister have no idea I'm on the way. Warning them would have meant giving up my advantage, and I didn't spend four months lying about my location, crammed into a tin can of a freighter and eating meals out of foil pouches for nothing.

"It's a change of plan," I explain, which has the benefit of being true. "The captain was saying there's no rides from Orbital down to the Graves compound today because of a dust storm. She thought I could get a lift to the UN base-to Pax-and then have my guys send a rover over to pick me up."

"We'll figure it out." Nathan sighs, like a man used to nobody respecting paperwork the way he does. "Got a name?"

I actually look down at myself, as if my body might have somehow transformed while I wasn't looking. I literally can't remember the last time this happened.

Our parents always kept our faces out of the newscasts-the best way to keep safe is to be unrecognizable. But I don't spend much time with the general public, so occasionally I forget that most people don't know me on sight. Everyone I encounter in my daily life sure does.

I've never been a fan of don't you know who I am?, but it's going to be hard to avoid it this time.

"My name's Hunter Graves."

"All right, let's see if there's a free seat. I gotta tell you, that dust storm's messed up a lot of people's plans," he says, tapping at his screen as I mentally count down.

Ten, nine, eight . . .

"Actually the dust has nearly reached Pax too, but we should be able to-"

. . . seven, six, five . . .

He looks up. He blinks. "I'm sorry, did you say Hunter Graves?"

There it is.

"At your service," I reply.

"As in . . . as in Graves?"

As in, this is basically my family's planet, is what he means. We were fastest. We were first. And everything here, including the orbital platform we're standing on, runs on GravesUP systems.

"That's me," I tell him, hefting my bag on my shoulder in a subtle show of impatience. "Pleased to meet you, Nathan."

The bag isn't uncomfortable. It weighs exactly ten kilos-or at least it did on Earth. It'll be three-point-something on Mars. I took the standard personal effects allotment, in some kind of misguided attempt to show Mom I was all business, and then regretted it every day of the four-month trip from Earth. I should have brought a stack of luggage taller than me-at a minimum, some decent bedding, some media gear worth using, and rations that actually qualified as food.

Seriously, I skipped breakfast this morning on the freighter. The calories just weren't worth the suffering. I'll be at the GravesUP compound in a few hours, diving face-first into the brunch of my dreams.

"Hunter Graves," poor old Nathan repeats, staring at me like I'm about to disappear, or start sparkling, or something.

"Hunter Graves," I confirm. "Of GravesUP Industries, on my way to join my family. I'll really owe you one if you can get me down to Pax today."

"Yes, of course, Mr. Graves. No problem at all," he replies, trying to . . . stand to attention, I think? "Why don't you get yourself settled on the shuttle, and I'll get the paperwork figured out for you. When you arrive, just tell the port crew you need a message transmitted to your compound, and they'll get that done for you."

"Nathan, you're the best."

Slipping past him, I stride onto the waiting shuttle, stow my bag, and sink down into the last remaining chair. The shuttle's crowded, mostly with folks in United Nations jumpsuits, and it smells like ozone and feet. Seriously, get me to my family compound. I have seen the real world, and it's a red-hot no from me.

It's strange, walking into an unknown crowd like this with zero security-feels like I left the house in just my underwear-but nobody seems to pay me any special attention.

As I pull on my shoulder straps, I can see the red planet below through the viewport. The ground's rough, the gleam of the sun just gilding the horizon as it starts to rise. Huge craters look like little polka dots, and mountain ranges are flattened by distance.

This is home sweet home for the next while-assuming Mom doesn't sling me back up into orbit and onto the first ship heading for Earth. I'm sure it'll be my twin sister's first suggestion.

Despite everything that's coming, I feel an unexpected tug toward the planet below. From Earth this place is nothing more than a red star, but up close it's so solid, so real.

Hey there, Mars. This should be fun.

2.

Cleo

7 hours, 55 minutes remaining

Breakfast is the best time of day to hustle people-they're still sleepy.

I scan the Pax cafeteria for a target, and zero in on a woman who's trying to carry a breakfast tray in one hand and a kid in the other while herding an extra kid through the busy morning crowd with a bump of her hip.

"Let me take that for you," I say, swooping in and relieving her of the tray before she has a chance to protest. "There are some tables on the other side of the hall there, we'll get you settled."

She glances at me for a moment, but she doesn't care that she doesn't recognize me. The usual population of the United Nations Mars base is about fifteen hundred people, but at least a third of that turns over weekly, as people head out to national or corporate compounds or return from duty. That's what's helped me stay anonymous in the three months since I got here.

It's no effort to let the crowd part me from my target, and a moment later I'm twisting away with her breakfast tray, ducking behind a couple of Martian-tall engineers and on my way to freedom.

But, Cleo, I hear you ask. Why don't you just grab one of those yummy, yummy muffins yourself? Why did you steal that poor woman's breakfast? The line's really not that long!

Well, to get breakfast, I'd need a registered handprint. And to get my handprint registered, I'd need to be a legal resident of Mars. And that's where we run into a problem.

I hitched a lift in on the sly and scammed my way down to Pax, but getting to a larger station is proving a lot harder than I anticipated. More often than not I'm hungry, and every minute of every day is spent figuring out how to blend in-because if I'm caught, I'll be deported quicker than you can say Cleo has not-so-nice friends waiting for her back on Earth. The life of a hitcher isn't all I hoped for, to be perfectly honest.

By this point, I know my way around Pax better than most of the residents, partly because I hide out in places they'd never go. I have to be creative, because every centimeter of space here is precious. Most of Pax Station is underground. If you flew over the top of us, the solar arrays would be most of what gave us away-big black panels angled toward the distant sun. This place is all about efficiency-nothing like the chaotic Jerhattan neighborhoods I grew up in.

Lucky for me, the hustles aren't that different, though, and the people here are the kind of easy marks I could have taken before I learned to read.

I scoot through the crowd and try not to reflect on the fact that, for all the people here who are pretty scammable, I'm not really coming out on top.

Still, right now I'm cruising out the cafeteria door, and taking a left to head toward water reclamation and the hydrogen plant. I've got muffins to spare, so not everything's terrible. I'll hole up somewhere in storage to eat them, and then I'll go check the transport bays. Optimism comes easier on a full belly.

Maybe today's the day I'll find a way onto a transport to one of the really big settlements, where an easier life awaits.

Maybe today's my lucky day, just waiting to begin.

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#Review - The Inheritance by Ilona Andrews #SyFy #Fantasy

Series: Breach Wars # 1
Format: 280 pages, ebook
Release Date: August 10, 2025
Publisher: NYLA
Source: Amazon
Genre: Science Fiction / Fantasy

We are at war. The interdimensional invasion brought us unimaginable suffering, but it also awoke talents slumbering deep within us, a means to repel and destroy our enemy. Every day new gates open, leading to breaches filled with monsters and valuable resources. If you are a Talent, your country needs you. The world needs you. Be the hero you were born to be.

Adaline is a Talent. Ten years ago, she had a happy marriage and a job she loved. The invasion shattered both. Now she works for the government, searching the breaches for magic metals and medicine to help Earth repel an interdimensional enemy. Two kids, one cat, bills, benefits, mortgage and school tuition...Risking her life became routine.

She had gone into the dimensional gates hundreds of times. She was always well protected. This time everything goes wrong. Now Ada is trapped in the labyrinth of alien caves unlike any other. Her only companion is a scared German Shepherd named Bear. Together they must uncover the breach's secrets and escape, because Ada promised her children that she will come home.

The future of humanity depends on it.

The Inheritance is the first installment in author Ilona Andrews' Breach Wars series. If you read the introduction to this story, you will get a laugh. What was initially supposed to be a novella ended up being a longer story with the likelihood of a sequel. This story revolves around two very different characters: Adaline Moore and Elias McFeron. In a world forever scarred by an interdimensional invasion a decade prior, humanity clings to survival amid daily breaches: unstable portals that spew forth monstrous threats but also yield precious resources, such as magic-infused metals and life-saving medicines. 

These rifts have awakened "Talents" in select individuals—enhanced abilities that turn ordinary people into reluctant heroes, conscripted to probe the unknown for the greater good. Enter Adaline "Ada" Serrano, a 42-year-old single mother and seasoned Talent evaluator working government contracts. Once blissfully married with a fulfilling career, Ada's life imploded with the invasion, leaving her juggling two kids, a sassy cat, mounting bills (orthodontic braces don't come cheap), and the grind of high-risk jobs that pay the mortgage but demand her soul. 

Ada is an Assessor Talent - she can look around a space and spot the usefulness of everything in it (like, she sees them glow in colors - yellow is dangerous, red is useful). Additionally, she can look at an object and immediately know its use (for example, this plant will yield a highly advanced medicine, this ore is unbreakable). Ada's routine dive into a breach goes catastrophically awry: a cave-in separates her from her team, stranding her deep within an alien labyrinth of twisting tunnels, bioluminescent fungi, and predatory beasts whose saliva burns like battery acid. 

Her sole companion? Bear, the team's loyal but terrified German Shepherd, whose training in a language Ada barely remembers, becomes their lifeline. What follows is an odyssey of survival, where Ada must navigate not just the physical perils of this otherworldly maze but also the unraveling secrets of the breach itself—secrets that could tip the scales in humanity's war. Woven throughout are flashbacks to Ada's pre-invasion life and tense glimpses into the broader geopolitical machinations of Talent guilds and governments, all underscored by her ironclad promise to her kids: she'll make it home, no matter the cost. 

Bear steals scenes as Ada's four-legged co-pilot, evolving from a panicked liability into a fiercely intuitive partner. Their bond—forged in shared terror and improvised commands—adds layers of warmth and tension, with the dog's peril hitting harder than any human drama. Elias is an interesting a character, though we got less of him in this book, which was understandable. 

This is Ada's story. Elias mostly had to sit on his butt and fume about the delay of getting back into the breach (and destroy a desk or two in his impatience). Ada's power evolution, while thrilling, borders on deus ex machina at times. Some interesting developments occur at the end of this book, so I am eager to read any sequel that may be written. 

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