PAID REVIEWS
FEBRUARY 2, 2026 BOOKLIFE 117
SF/FANTASY/HORROR Taming the Perilous Skies Phil Marshall 450p, e-book,$3.99, ISBN 979-8-9996807-2-3
Near-future tech utopia faces collapse in this detailed thriller.
inside an aerial. Marshall, focused on both big ideas and everyday reality, imagines a heartening future and its potential collapse, spinning the story with brisk, compelling prose and a sure hand for the science—including the social. With casualties estimated in the millions, the disaster threatens a society
A collapse in a near future’s worldwide energy grid causes disaster in this smart, sprawling SF thriller of tech, politics, and power, Marshall’s debut. In 2076, an Earth of open trade and travel runs on antigravity energy harnessed by eccentric trillionaire Brian Med- lock, who discovered that gravity and quantum physics exist together in a persistent “Fabric” made up of all known particles. A utopia emerges of reversed climate change, dissolved geopolitical barriers, and travel using
Great for fans of Kim Stanley Robinson, Malka Older.
that has undergone social and spiritual revolutions, all powered by this suddenly fallible technology. While Batra faces election difficulties and Medlock harbors suspicions about a rival, Marshall stirs resonant questions about tech dependence, even touching on some people’s reverence for the Fabric as God. Marshall weaves a sprawling procedural of high tech, government agencies, politics, religion, and human nature that gets bogged down by surplus detail. Never- theless, readers who like bold, sweeping sagas, in-depth and fascinating visions of the future, and teams of dedicated characters working together to solve a problem will be engaged in Marshall’s comprehensive worldbuilding and planetwide dilemma.
antigravity aerial pods running along a Fabric grid. One day, National Safety Deputy Director Jack Woods witnesses the crash of an “aerial”—which makes billions of flights each day—on the White House lawn. Worse, the aerials the world depends upon are now dropping from the sky, and the entire Fabric grid is frozen. Also investigating the case is Transportation Technology Director Olivia Martorana. As U.S. President Farra Batra and her officials ask whether this was a software glitch or deliberate sabotage, Woods faces both national and personal crises: his young son Erik is trapped alone
Cover: A | Design & typography: B+ | Illustrations: – Editing: A- | Marketing copy: A
SF/FANTASY/HORROR Memory, Memory, Go Away Christopher W. Selna 473p, hardcover, $21.99, ISBN 979-8-9936076-0-3
Fierce dystopian thriller of how much of ourselves we are willing to erase.
manipulation, jolting revelations, and survival-driven bargaining, Malcolm pieces together the truths about the program. Cain emerges as Selna’s most unsettling creation—an enigmatic figure who blends tech messiah rhetoric with casual sadism, insisting on the moral necessity of atrocity. Selna imbues Malcolm with a nervous interiority that feels honest rather than
Selna’s furious thriller of memory as both weapon and currency imagines a near-future America whose citi- zenry seems willing to trade psychic autonomy for stability. In a nation hollowed out by epidemics of opioid addiction and suicides, the federal government backs a procedure that surgically removes individuals’ trau- matic memories. The program’s glossy reputation, though, masks a far more disturbing reality, one whose façade comes crashing down over the course of a single
Great for fans of Jo Harkin’s Tell Me an Ending , Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother.
cartoonish; Malcolm’s spiraling thoughts, self-doubt, and flashes of anger give the book a raw emotional texture. The novel moves at a relentless clip, rarely relenting long enough for thematic moments to breathe, often sacrificing polish for immediacy. The prose comes in jagged bursts, sometimes distractingly wordy or pushily frag- mented, an approach that can feel exhausting over nearly 500 pages. Still, Selna’s concerns—AI-assisted governance, memory manipulation, authoritarian tech—feel sharply attuned to contemporary anxieties, and his refusal to let readers feel safe brings intensity to the question of how much we are willing to erase to survive a system designed to control us.
night. Selna (author of Eytheral ) centers the tale on Malcolm B. Jenners, a deeply neurotic everyman of ordinary ambitions. When he is unexpectedly tapped to serve as the live interviewer for Addison Cain, the cultishly revered founder of the memory- extraction program, Malcolm senses that he is being used as a prop. Tension escalates quickly as Addison’s inner circle treat Malcolm with open contempt, culminating in a humiliating confrontation and surprising burst of violence. Selna does not soften such moments as the story plunges into full dystopian horror and Malcolm is abducted by a Riot Task Force. As he faces a gauntlet of psychological
Cover: B | Design & typography: A- | Illustrations: – Editing: B | Marketing copy: B-
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