SFF

The Glass Garden

by Jessica Lévai
Lanternfish. May 2025. 132p. ISBN 9781941360873. pap. $16. SF
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The salvage crew of the Maris Stella need a big payday, and their captain, Lissy, is willing to cut all the corners to get one, even if she has to manipulate her snooty sister, archaeologist Therese Blake, into joining the crew to authenticate a fascinating, beautiful relic on a mysteriously empty colony planet that no one else knows about. But the more Therese digs, the creepier things get, as she discovers that the planet’s colonists abandoned everything there—including their ships—but left behind no bodies. All that’s left on the colony planet is a huge mural that is absolutely not what it seems. The crew of the Maris Stella are soon absorbed by the anomalous mural, to the point of obsession. By the time they discover the true fate of those colonists, they’ve already joined them.
VERDICT Readers who love the space horror of S.A. Barnes or the planet-bound SF horror of Kemi Ashing-Giwa’s This World Is Not Yours will be instantly captured by Lévai’s (The Night Library of Sternendach) creepy lost-colony story with its chilling mystery.
Reviewed by Marlene Harris , Apr 25, 2025
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