Fractal Noise
(Libby/OverDrive eBook, Kindle)

Bestseller Paolini's standalone prequel to 2020's To Sleep in a Sea of Stars breathes new life into the classic first encounter narrative through a sophisticated examination of the grieving narrator's psyche. In 2234, after a predator kills xenobiologist Alex Crichton's wife, Layla, on the colonized planet of Eidolon, Alex joins up with a survey expedition to get off-world, but his heart isn't in his work. He's wracked with guilt over his failure to protect Layla and barely able to do the minimum necessary for his job. His feeling that nothing matters anymore is challenged when the spaceship's cartographer detects something unprecedented on unexplored planet Talos VII: a huge, perfectly circular hole. Though the planet is believed to be devoid of life, the hole's dimensions and neatness suggest that it's artificial, and thus, potentially, "the first concrete proof of intelligent, self-aware aliens." Crichton joins the small team dispatched to Talos VII's surface to investigate, but that effort proves hazardous--and the greatest threats are those the team members pose to each other. Paolini makes the experiences of his well-shaded explorers vivid and gripping through smart worldbuilding and believable stakes. James S.A. Corey fans will be especially riveted. (May)

This pulse-pounding science-fiction novel pits human curiosity and technology against alien tech deep in the cosmos. The story follows Alex Crichton, a xenobiologist whose ship, the Adamura, comes in contact with evidence of sophisticated alien intelligence when they discover a massive cylindrical hole cut into the surface of a faraway planet which is transmitting a message into space. The sonic force that the hole exerts on the plant is so massive that the ship can't land safely. The crew decides to send a small away party to discover what they can, crossing the planet on foot. The majority of the novel describes this grueling trek, which, with its tents and sleds, reads as a story ripped from the pages of Antarctic exploration. The away mission does not go as planned, with equipment failures, unexpected encounters, and the growing threat that the ever-present "thud" from the alien machine will make them lose their grip on reality. VERDICT Those daunted by the 800+ pages of the first in this series, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, will find this a comparably brief read, and it works well as an excellent starting point for the series as a whole.--Jeremiah Rood

When crew members aboard the spaceship SLV Adamura discover that the planet Talos VII is sporting a strange alien artifact, they decide to investigate. Xenobiologist Alex Crichton isn't very engaged in his work aboard the Adamura. He's in the depths of grief after his partner, Layla, was killed on the planet where she and Crichton were colonists. But then the crew picks up something strange on the surface of remote planet Talos VII: a hole. An enormous, perfectly circular opening that was clearly made by a race of intelligent beings and seems to function as a huge speaker. After heated debate on whether the Adamura crew should try to investigate the phenomenon themselves or wait for a mission better equipped for such an exploration, Crichton joins a small team tasked with crossing the hostile Talos VII landscape to explore the alien artifact. It doesn't take long for things to start going wrong, and as the team gets closer to the crater, their equipment, bodies, and minds start to fracture. What starts off as a bitter but contained tension between geologist and rationalist Volya Pushkin and the deeply religious team leader, Talia Indelicato, heats to a boiling point as supplies and patience run low. And Tao Chen, the timid chemist, struggles to stay out of their arguments until he hurts his leg and becomes a literal, physical pawn in their fights. Crichton, who was already on shaky psychological ground, becomes determined to make it to the site if only to honor what Layla would have done had she been in his place. Paolini effectively creates a gradual creep of dread as the doomed team slowly falls apart. While some aspects of the crew tensions fall a bit flat--the ongoing talking points between Pushkin and Talia about religion versus reason feel uninspired--the team's descent into paranoia and violence is effectively rendered. Paolini understands that in the best character-driven science-fiction stories, the alien tech is never as interesting as the human relationships. Tense and gripping. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Fleeing from personal tragedy, xenobiologist Alex Crichton is assigned to a corporate exploration ship scouting a new star system for potentially habitable planets when the team discovers an anomaly: a gigantic, perfectly circular hole in a planet that emits a regular signal encoding the Mandelbrot set. Despite his misgivings, and spurred by the memory of who he lost, Alex volunteers to be on the landing crew sent down to explore the planet's surface. What follows is a torturous journey of mounting tension, danger, and uncertainty. It's a pressure cooker that gradually wears away at the characters' psyches. Things get dark. This is a deep character portrait, enhanced by the mystery and disconcerting nature of the setting. Layered on top is a meditation on grief and faith. It's a heady mix of ingredients. The central mystery is never solved, and the ending is left unresolved, but it finishes with a welcome note of hope. Fractal Noise is very different in length and tone from its predecessor (To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, 2020), and it shows Paolini's range as a storyteller. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Since leaving his YA fantasy series behind, Paolini's SF star has shone more brightly with every new release. Copyright 2023 Booklist Reviews.

Set in an alternate 1840s New England, To Shape a Dragon's Breath features Indigenous teenager Anequs, honored by her people when she bonds with a newly hatched dragon but challenged by the repressive rules at her dragon school, run by Anglish conquerors; debuter Blackgoose is an enrolled member of the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe. Disappointed in love and life, Harlow Estrada returns home to The Enchanted Hacienda, where the women in her family purvey a gift she lacks, creating magic from flowers—but who knows what kind of magic might come her way as she runs the house in their absence; an adult debut from best-selling YA/Middle School author Cervantes. In The Water Outlaws, Hugo Award winner Huang draws on the Chinese classic Water Margin to tell the story of Lin Chong, who is driven from her job training the emperor's soldiers and taken in by the Bandits of Liangshan—thieves and murderers who seek justice for the empire's downtrodden (30,000-copy first printing). Living in an isolated apartment outside London five years after a microplastic storm killed most of Earth's population, Katie and son Harry—born after the storm—learn they are Not Alone in ecologist Jackson's debut; a stranger barges in, unsettling their lives but inspiring Katie to seek out her fiancé. In British Fantasy winner/Bram Stoker finalist Khaw's The Salt Grows Heavy, a mermaid murders her husband, destroys his kingdom, and runs off with a mysterious doctor to the taiga, where they discover a village full of creepy children whose blood sport jeopardizes their visitors (125,000-copy first printing). It is foretold that Psyche will vanquish a monster that makes even the gods quake, and she dutifully trains for battle, but in debuter McNamara's retelling of the Psyche and Eros myth, her victim is the god of love himself, pricked by his own arrow (100,000-copy first printing). In the mega-best-selling Paolini's Fractal Noise, a huge pit clearly made by someone or something is spotted by the crew of the Adamura on the supposedly uninhabited planet of Talos, and a team is dispatched to investigate (400,000-copy first printing). Seeking a cure for her desperately ill mother, Nat Drozdova travels to a snow-shrouded Manhattan skyscraper, where she encounters a winter goddess who sends her on a dangerous mission in the New York Times best-selling Saintcrow's Russian fantasy-inspired Spring's Arcana (100,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). In this new fantasy from Wells, winner of Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Alex honors for her New York Times best-selling "Murderbot Diaries" series, Witch King Kai-Enna has been confined to a complex water trap after being murdered and is struggling to understand why he was imprisoned and why the Rising World Coalition is getting stronger by the day (200,000-copy first printing).

This pulse-pounding science-fiction novel pits human curiosity and technology against alien tech deep in the cosmos. The story follows Alex Crichton, a xenobiologist whose ship, the Adamura, comes in contact with evidence of sophisticated alien intelligence when they discover a massive cylindrical hole cut into the surface of a faraway planet which is transmitting a message into space. The sonic force that the hole exerts on the plant is so massive that the ship can't land safely. The crew decides to send a small away party to discover what they can, crossing the planet on foot. The majority of the novel describes this grueling trek, which, with its tents and sleds, reads as a story ripped from the pages of Antarctic exploration. The away mission does not go as planned, with equipment failures, unexpected encounters, and the growing threat that the ever-present "thud" from the alien machine will make them lose their grip on reality. VERDICT Those daunted by the 800+ pages of the first in this series, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, will find this a comparably brief read, and it works well as an excellent starting point for the series as a whole.—Jeremiah Rood

Bestseller Paolini's standalone prequel to 2020's To Sleep in a Sea of Stars breathes new life into the classic first encounter narrative through a sophisticated examination of the grieving narrator's psyche. In 2234, after a predator kills xenobiologist Alex Crichton's wife, Layla, on the colonized planet of Eidolon, Alex joins up with a survey expedition to get off-world, but his heart isn't in his work. He's wracked with guilt over his failure to protect Layla and barely able to do the minimum necessary for his job. His feeling that nothing matters anymore is challenged when the spaceship's cartographer detects something unprecedented on unexplored planet Talos VII: a huge, perfectly circular hole. Though the planet is believed to be devoid of life, the hole's dimensions and neatness suggest that it's artificial, and thus, potentially, "the first concrete proof of intelligent, self-aware aliens." Crichton joins the small team dispatched to Talos VII's surface to investigate, but that effort proves hazardous—and the greatest threats are those the team members pose to each other. Paolini makes the experiences of his well-shaded explorers vivid and gripping through smart worldbuilding and believable stakes. James S.A. Corey fans will be especially riveted. (May)