In 24th century America, 13-year-old Charlie scrapes out a life in a “reclaimed zone,” where the living situation is mediocre at best, while dodging his abusive uncle’s tirades. In his free time, he salvages leftover war scraps hidden in an underground warehouse and saves his credits, until the day comes that his secret cache is discovered and he’s forced to flee. From there, Charlie stumbles through a dangerous world, making friends with a dog named Katie and discovering a thriving city perched by a shimmering ocean: Arcadia, where he meets the Bimmy family and learns that Katie was their son’s service dog—before he went missing.

McGuire (Nightmares & Lullabies) deftly sketches the shifting power dynamics of a future Earth plagued by dying resources, where the planet is burning up and no amount of intergalactic intervention can save it. Space mining is the central industry in McGuire’s world, and Earth’s trajectory is doomed—worsened by failing relationships with its colonies, interplanetary rebellion, and a looming war pitting Earth against a rebellion pirate group and colonies desperate for independence. Amid the tumult, Charlie is given a chance at a new life when the Bimmys adopt him—and new love, in the form of the strong-willed, whip-smart Becca, who dabbles in wormhole travel while studying astrophysics.

From the start, McGuire sets a snappy pace for this intense story, teasing multiple perspectives and time skips that are complex but still relatively easy to follow. The politics are starkly persuasive, affecting both Becca’s research and Charlie’s work in the military Space Force, and McGuire’s doom-and-gloom scenario for Earth plays out convincingly, allowing Charlie and Becca to mourn the planet’s downward spiral while discovering the echoes of a potential new world by the book’s end. SF fans will relish the book’s message that, to survive this near future, one must “think beyond tomorrow’s sun.”

Takeaway: Refreshing sci-fi where complex characters race to save a dying Earth.

Comparable Titles: Marko Kloos’s Terms of Enlistment, Kyle Noland’s S.E.T. The Earth on Fire.

Production grades
Cover: C
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A