Excerpts Horror Read an Excerpt From Decomposition Book by Sara van Os A woman finds a dead body and can’t give up its ghost… By Sara van Os | Published on April 28, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Decomposition Book by Sara van Os, out from Hanover Square Press on May 19th. Spiraling from a disastrous falling-out with her best friend, Savannah retreats to her parents’ empty lake house in upstate New York to tend her wounds. Isolated and reeling from rejection, she spends her days in a fog, drinking and overthinking in equal worrisome measure. Until she wakes up one morning in the woods behind the house—next to a dead body.Instead of calling the police, Savannah reads the journal she finds nearby, reliving the last desperate months of this woman’s life lost in the wilderness, fighting for survival. Ava, as it turns out, is more than just a cold, lonely corpse. She was funny. She was smart. And Savannah has finally found someone she can talk to…As she pushes deeper into Ava’s harrowing story, Savannah notices a change, a shift in her reality. Each page brings her closer to the Ava from the journal… and the ghost before her now. Before long, Savannah feels something for Ava she hasn’t felt for anyone else—and there’s a good chance letting go would haunt her for the rest of her life.Is Savannah finally losing her grip? Or has she found the friend she’s needed all along? Savannah Something is poking me in the back and I’m cold as fuck. This information on its own is not concerning enough to get me to peel open my probably hungover little eyeballs. I roll off the pokey thing and reach for my comforter, but I come away with a handful of dirt instead. That is enough information to cause me to pry open my definitely hungover little eyeballs. It does not help that I find myself squinting into the cold, cruel light of dawn. “What the fuck?” I say to myself, sitting up with a groan. No way I’m actually lying in the woods in my nightgown. This is it. This is the day I have to check myself into rehab. I stand up and turn to make my walk of shame home, glad that I at least recognize this spot as a place I used to play when I was little, and then I stop so hard I wobble—because I’m looking at a corpse. I’m looking at an actual true-crime-documentary-in-the-woods human woman’s most likely murdered body. For all the times when I was a kid binge-watching Investigation Discovery with my mom, all the times when I knew for sure what I would do if I murdered someone or found a body or any of those shows’ scenarios, for all of my intricate and foolproof plans and backup plans that I knew I’d definitely carry out with the cool-headedness of a trained assassin, I do not react as planned or backup planned. Instead I stare at her like Donald Trump stared at that solar eclipse: I blink twice, dry heave, turn ninety degrees to the left, and absolutely haul ass out of there. I’m dodging trees, because my contact lenses are dried out from sleeping in them, so I can’t see. I’m trying to wipe that weird goop—the stuff that oozes out and glues your eyes together while you sleep—off my eyelashes when I think I see someone brush against my right side, like a cat trying to get my attention, but when I look, there’s no one. I skid to a stop, squinting into the trees, trying to figure out where I am. I have to blink several times to verify that I’m still alone. Sometimes I swear I can see the version of Michelle that lives inside my head and exists to taunt me. She’s so good at being almost real. Damn, Savage, Michelle says. You finally did it. “What?” I’m not supposed to talk to her. It’s a compulsion. And it only makes her worse. I don’t look at her, though—that’s gotta count for something. Buy the Book Decomposition Book Sara van Os Buy Book Decomposition Book Sara van Os Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Finally found a body! Michelle says with a smile. Fuck, I looked. It’s okay. I just won’t say anything else to her. She isn’t real. She isn’t real. I look around. I can’t see the edge of the trees from here. That means I’m going the wrong way. Okay. Backward. I turn and start to walk back toward the body, trying not to think of it as “toward the body.” Don’t you remember? That summer of sixth grade when your mom was really big on the true crime documentaries and you got all obsessed with death. You wanted to find a body so you could see what it was like to be dead. So we looked. We climbed that big, brushy hill in front of your old house and started looking behind trees and under bushes, hoping at the very least we’d find someone’s severed arm or something. Michelle continues on, pulling the memory up from deep in my mind like she’s pulling a loose thread from a sweater. She projects it up on the inner wall of my brain for me to see. It’s true. We did look. I don’t know why; I just found being dead fascinating and I didn’t love its certainty. I thought seeing it would help me prepare for the thing that was coming for me, too. I stare hard at the ground to stop myself from unraveling. I need to focus on getting back. I know where the clearing with the body is relative to my house. I used to take a lot of walks out here when I was younger, and that clearing is the only real break in the trees I’ve ever found. The rest of the forest is super dense, so I used to stop at that clearing and chill. I found the spot to be peaceful, probably why I went there last night in the first place. My stomach tightens as I get close. I’m nervous. I remind myself that I’m not going back to gawk at the body; I’m only trying to get home. So? How was it? The more I try to ignore her, the louder Michelle speaks. Are you fascinated? Is that why your heart’s beating faster right now—because you’re excited to go back and poke her with a stick? I can hear it from here. I stop walking and close my eyes, hoping that when I open them, she’ll be gone. I try to breathe slower and regulate my heart rate. I count my heartbeats. Too many of them, too fast. I push on my sternum with my palm to try to make it stop. I worry my heart will burst and then there will be two corpses out here. Behind my eyelids is an image of myself poking the body in the stomach with a stick. I push too hard and it pops and something green and sludgy oozes out. I shake my head back and forth, hoping to clear the image like an Etch A Sketch. The me in my head pushes the stick even deeper and twists. I open my eyes, panting, and there’s Michelle again, laughing at me. Jesus, you’re sick. Always have been, though, clearly. I drop my hand to my side and start walking again, faster, fists balled, denting my palms with my nails. It starts to look brighter up ahead, where the trees open up. I slow down until I’ve stopped. The tree just in front of me is the tree that she’s behind. When I inch to the right and look down, I can see her half her hand, peeking out from the end of a raggedy sleeve, fingers curled into a stiff cup. It still looks so much like a living hand, but there’s something uncanny about it that gives me the ick. But I can’t look away; I don’t breathe. This is what I will become. A statue of flesh. An almost person. How do you think she died? Michelle asks, snapping me out of it so abruptly that I jump with a squeak—I’m almost glad the woman on the ground isn’t alive to hear it. I force my cement feet forward, straight past the body, refusing to turn around and look back at her, trying to stay ahead of Michelle, but Michelle moves alongside me with ease. The body doesn’t bother her. Meanwhile, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s staring at me. I mean, Michelle continues, it’s not like people just drop dead around here. How’d she even get here, anyway? You don’t have neighbors. The nearest house is, what? A mile away? Two? “She could be homeless,” I mutter, and then scold myself for answering. I count my breaths in sets of two. I take two steps for every breath. I just need to get home. Michelle huffs. Homeless? Around here? Babe, that’s like being homeless in the Hamptons. It’s not really done. One, two. One, two. She’s not real. She’s not real. She was probably murdered. That’s the only way a corpse ever really ends up in the woods. And if she was murdered, you know what that means? I do not want to know what that means, but Michelle tells me anyway. That means either some crazed killer decided to dump the body here in the middle of the night even though he would have had to drive right up your driveway and past your house to get here, and then drag her through the woods and dump her against that tree even though he for sure knows you live here and will likely find his kill OR—she pauses for dramatic effect—you killed her. I skid to a stop. “Me?” Excerpted from Decomposition Book by Sara Van Os. © 2026 by Sara Van Os, used with permission from Hanover Square Press, an imprint of HarperCollins. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Decomposition Book</i> by Sara van Os appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Watchlist Here Are All the Genre TV Premieres Airing in May! A spin-off from For All Mankind, a new season of The Terror, and Stranger Things for a slightly older crowd awaits. By Petrana Radulovic | Published on April 28, 2026 Image credits: Prime Video; Cartoon Network; AMC Comment 0 Share New Share Image credits: Prime Video; Cartoon Network; AMC There is a lot of entertainment out there these days, and a lot of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror titles to parse through. So we’re rounding up the genre television coming out each month.  A new season of horror anthology The Terror hits AMC—and this one takes place in a psychiatric facility. A smattering of adult animated comedies debut, as well as Netflix’s adaptation of hit video game series Devil May Cry. Also from Netflix is a quirky new show described as Stranger Things for senior citizens. The Terror: Devil in Silver — AMC+/Shudder (May 7) AMC’s horror anthology series returns. This time, instead of the icy Northwest passage or an internment camp, the show is set in a psychiatric facility, where a working-class man (played by Dan Stevens) is wrongfully committed. In addition to adversarial patients and medical staff, the man must also face a supernatural threat lurking in the halls. Subtitled Devil in Silver, this season is based on Victor LaValle’s novel of the same name—and LaValle showruns this season alongside Chris Cantwell. Regular Show: The Lost Tapes — Cartoon Network (May 11)  Cartoon Network’s beloved animated series gets a sort of revival, sort of continuation, sort of midquel. Regular Show takes palace in a world of quirky anthropomorphic creatures, which range from animals to gumball machines. It follows the misadventures of two slacker friends, a bluejay named Mordecai and a raccoon named Rigby. The show originally ran for eight seasons, before ending in 2017. Devil May Cry — Netflix (May 12)  Based on the hit video game franchise of the same name, Devil May Cry centers around Dante, a half-demon demon hunter. Dante attempts to thwart a demonic invasion of earth by a demon-obsessed terrorist—but he must also avoid the anti-demon government organization DARKCOM, which has its eyes on him. Dante clashes with pragmatic DARKCOM lieutenant Mary Ann. Good Omens — Prime Video (May 13)  (Season 3) Amazon Prime’s Good Omens series concludes with a one episode finale. Based on Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s 1990 novel, Good Omens follows the misadventures of angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and demon Crowley (David Tennant). The first season adapted the book pretty faithfully and the second season continued the story—with a big ol’ kiss between the pair. The series was well-received. Gaiman was originally heavily involved, but after sexual assault allegations against him surfaced in 2024, he stepped back from production. The Boroughs — Netflix (May 21) In a quiet retirement community, a group of seniors bands together to stop an otherworldly threat. Produced by the Duffer Brothers (of Stranger Things fame), The Boroughs boasts an all-star cast including Bill Pullman, Geena Davis, Alfred Molina, and Alfre Woodard. Netflix describes the show as “Stranger Things, but for seniors”—and honestly? That sounds incredibly cool. Mating Season — Netflix (May 22) From the creators of Big Mouth, Mating Season follows a group of horny anthropomorphic animals desperate to get laid. Expect a lot of dirty jokes and uncomfortable sexual situations. Zach Woods, Nick Kroll, June Diane Raphael, and Sabrina Jalees. Rick and Morty — Adult Swim (May 24) (Season 9) Adult Swim’s hit series returns for a ninth season. Since 2013, misanthropic mad scientist Rick has been dragging his hapless grandson Morty along on interdimensional adventures. Their quirky adventures clash with the domestic drama happening with the rest of the family. The show has been nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards.  Spider-Noir — Prime Video (May 27) Nicholas Cage stars as Ben Reilly, an alternate version of Spider-Man who is a grizzled noir detective. Reilly’s retired from his life of vigilante crime fighting, but a new case pulls him back into the fray. Cage voiced the role in the Spider-Verse animated movie franchise. The show is live action, though, and will be released in both black and white and color.  Star City — Apple TV (May 29) A spinoff of Apple TV’s For All Mankind, Star City takes place in the same alternate history where the space race continued on after the Soviets put a man on the moon. This time, however, the focus is on the Soviet Union and the show will explore the Soviet space program. Star City stars Rhys Ifans, Anna Maxell Martin, and Agnes O’Casey.[end-mark] The post Here Are All the Genre TV Premieres Airing in May! appeared first on Reactor.

Books book reviews Houston, We Have A Problem: Cameron Johnston’s First Mage on the Moon Sasha Bonkowsky reviews the science fantasy novel from Cameron Johnston By Sasha Bonkowsky | Published on April 28, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? […] We choose to go to the moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard… When stray lightning sends an alchemical cannon shooting into the sky, military engineer Ella Pickering is struck with a lightning bolt of her own: What if she could harness the same power and visit the moon? That grey disk, 240,000 miles away, hosts the Silver Palace of the gods, who’ve watched for centuries as Ella’s country of Unity and the Ranneas Empire fight to a bloody, ruinous stalemate. Prayers and pleas have so far failed to convince them, but maybe an emissary, to knock on their doors and demand the slaughter ends… It’s a mad, treacherous idea—not to mention deeply heretical—but it just might work. Of course, she can’t actually request funding for a rocket. Military money to an initiative not directly focused on killing more of the Empire’s mages and princes—unthinkable! But the man in charge of the alchemical design, Jackan Grissom, is equally inspired by her talk of moonshot. He’s had enough of building bombs and bone-shredding devices; he wants magic to mean something again, to be used for good. Together, they begin laying out their calculations, the gunpowder and flame and levitation runes needed to escape the Great Mother’s pull and reach space. The project grows. Jackan and the ambitious Guylan Bluford retrieve the experimental prototype from No Man’s Land and the twisted remnants of magic that occupy the place. When they’re set upon by Empire mages intent on stealing Unity tech, Jackan brokers a truce by telling them the truth about the rocket and that it has no combat capabilities. Imperial sergeant Andriyan Korolev is duly impressed, and lets them go with half the prototype and a promise to report back to his boss Taeban Tereshkova; Bluford is less impressed, but comes around after realizing the prestige and glory that would come with being first in space. Back at camp, Ella recruits the cheery mathematical genius Katherine Goddard to join them, then lies to a noble’s face that really, all they’re working on is a way to drop war golems behind enemy lines and wreak havoc. The noble is delighted, and offers them near-unlimited funding… but using it for a moon landing instead has just gone from “maybe treason” to “definitely treason”. Whoops1. Buy the Book First Mage on the Moon Cameron Johnston Buy Book First Mage on the Moon Cameron Johnston Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget I really wanted to like this book. The premise is incredible—mages! Going to the moon!—and I loved many of its approaches to traditional aerospace engineering problems. The exponential growth of the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation (that to lift a rocket, you need fuel, but to lift that fuel, you need more fuel, and so on) making your life hell? Ella’s levitation runes from her time as a skymage can fix it. How to supply fresh oxygen in a sealed capsule for several days? Pressurized liquid oxygen is far outside our characters’ technological abilities, but summoning an air elemental isn’t. Need wireless communications? No radios, but scrying through a crystal ball works just as well. The trouble is, First Mage on the Moon isn’t much beyond its premise. It’s a straight line of a story, heading directly towards the moon and steamrolling any interesting character tensions or suspense that might deviate it. For instance, you might think that because going to the moon is a Tower-of-Babel kind of blasphemy, any of our engineers might have issues with it based on their faith. These are men and women who pray for storms, who have priests to guide the dead to the underworld; what happens when they’re asked to put those beliefs aside and stand as equals with the gods in the Silver Palace? Fortunately for the fledgling space program, nothing. None of its crew are pious or have any qualms about flying to the gods’ own palaces. Similarly, everyone they recruit to the project—even Korolev and Tereshkova, enemy combatants—are functionally on board as soon as the moonshot’s explained to them, each as starry-eyed as Ella and Jackan. Unlike rocketry, though, this sort of inexorable forward momentum is a drag on the book. If getting to the moon is all but guaranteed—if there’s no question about the crew’s commitment to the project, or whether they’re willing to risk their lives—what exactly am I reading for? First Mage feels like a first draft rushed to publication because its back-cover copy was strong, without putting the work in to craft it into a rich story. On a craft level, the book’s prose is often just as clumsy. When Jackan and Guylan are assigned together for their venture into No Man’s Land, we get this statement: [Jackan] snatched his hand back, checking to make sure all his fingers were still there. The older engineer put a hand on the door, then turned to Guylan and sighed. “So, we don’t like each other much. That’s fine, but know I will watch your back out there. Let’s get this over with and get back to proper work as soon as we can.” One passage does not a book make, but First Mage is riddled with lines like these: characters awkwardly stating exactly the emotion or motivation they’re expressing, as if worried the reader won’t pick up on it otherwise. Just a few pages earlier, after Ella’s told she was unfairly blamed for an airship accident that broke her spine, she goes from fury at herself to fury at the hierarchs, as well as questions about if her punishment is truly done. The narration then helpfully informs us, “Her self-recrimination gave way to anger and a measure of paranoia.” This sort of unsubtle declaration feels like it’s made for casual viewing, the film genre popularized by Netflix in which screenwriters are told to “have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along”. But the best books give expansive leeway to interpret characters’ actions and play the story out in readers’ imaginations; for a book about starstruck dreams and expansive ideals, First Mage allows very little room to soar indeed. I wish First Mage had been good. Space exploration is inspiring, even magical—I finished reading the book about the same time the Artemis II astronauts splashed down safely in the ocean, carrying the hopes of the world with them. But for all it tries to capture the same excitement, First Mage doesn’t quite get off the ground.[end-mark] The eagle-eyed, or those who were hopelessly obsessed with space when they were six like your humble correspondent, might notice that every main character is named after a famous rocket scientist or astronaut: Bill Pickering ran JPL for 20 years in the 50s and 60s, Gus Grissom flew in the Mercury and Gemini programs and died in the Apollo 1 fire, Guion Bluford was a Shuttle astronaut who was the first African-American in space, Robert Goddard built the first liquid-fuel rocket, Sergei Korolev ran the USSR’s rocket program during the Space Race, and Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space. ︎ First Mage on the Moon is published by Angry Robot. The post Houston, We Have A Problem: Cameron Johnston’s <i>First Mage on the Moon</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books Front Lines and Frontiers An Exciting Tale in a Fascinating Setting: Trouble on Titan by Alan E. Nourse A thrilling adventure in one of the coolest places in the Solar System… By Alan Brown | Published on April 28, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement. I am a long-time fan of author Alan E. Nourse, whose works I discovered during my youth because the local library shelved them alphabetically beside books by Andre Norton. Unfortunately, my library only had three of Nourse’s books, so I have always been hungry to read more. One of the books I’ve searched for is the juvenile novel Trouble on Titan, set on Saturn’s largest moon—one of the most fascinating bodies in the Solar System. So, when I recently found a used paperback copy at a reasonable price online, I snapped it up. The book turned out to be well worth the wait. The technological extrapolation is, as with many books from the mid-20th century, significantly at odds with what has actually happened in the ensuing decades. And our understanding of the nature of Titan, as with many other bodies in the outer Solar System, has evolved quite a bit from the theories and suppositions of that time. But despite the setting being dated, the story is an engaging tale of two young men from vastly different backgrounds, one from Earth and one from Titan, whose unlikely friendship prevents a violent and unnecessary clash. There is also a clever twist that keeps this story of colonial uprising from being just another futuristic rehash of the American Revolution. Trouble on Titan was originally published by the John C. Winston Company in 1954. The copy I used for this review is a used copy, published by Ace Books in 1986. The cover is a striking astronomical illustration of Titan, Saturn, and a spaceship, painted by Don Dixon. There is a stamp on the flyleaf showing that it was once in stock at Cal’s Paperback Exchange in Spokane, Washington. About the Author Alan E. Nourse (1928-1992) was a physician who also had a long and productive writing career. He wrote science fiction, mainstream fiction, non-fiction books on science and medical issues, and penned a medical column that appeared in Good Housekeeping magazine. I previously reviewed his novel Raiders from the Rings, his short story collection Tiger by the Tail, and his novel Star Surgeon. There is more information on the author and his work in those reviews. Like many authors of his time, some of his work is out of copyright and available for reading on the internet for free here on Project Gutenberg. Titan Is Cool Saturn’s moon Titan is one of the coolest bodies in the Solar System, and that’s not just because of its low surface temperature, which is about 291 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. It has many other qualities that make it unique. Unlike other moons, it has a thick atmosphere, and even lakes and oceans. That atmosphere, however, is a mix of nitrogen and methane, and because of the low temperatures, the lakes and oceans are made up of methane and/or ethane. It is not a rocky body, although it does have a rocky core, and is made up mostly of ice, with an icy crust, and a possible subsurface ocean of liquid, ammonia-rich water. Its atmosphere is perpetually cloudy, and it has seasonal weather patterns, and even rain (although the precipitation is not water). It is believed to have constant, strong winds, with the atmosphere rotating at a different speed than the surface, something called atmospheric super-rotation. There might be some volcanic activity on Titan, but it would likely consist of eruptions of liquid water instead of liquid rock. Like Earth’s Moon, Titan is tidally locked to Saturn, so if you could see Saturn through the hazy atmosphere, it would always be in the same position. I have long been fascinated by Titan, because while it seems Earth-like in some aspects, it is strange in other ways. For example, because of its low surface gravity and thick atmosphere, it might be the only place in the Solar System where a human could strap on a set of wings and be able to fly simply using the strength of their arms. Because of Titan’s low temperatures, the nature of materials is quite different from what you find on Earth, as what is gas on Earth is liquid on Titan, and Earth liquids are solids. That difference would pose significant challenges to visitors from Earth, who require temperatures to survive that would melt their surroundings on Titan, and who require oxygen, a dangerously explosive substance on Titan. And unlike current spacesuits, which are insulated from their surroundings by the vacuum of space, protective suits on Titan would have to be adapted to a thick atmosphere that would draw heat away from the occupants. While Alan E. Nourse’s Trouble on Titan does a fairly good job conforming to scientific ideas about Titan as they existed in the 1950s, it does feature some details that we now know are incorrect. The first is the sky, which is described as clear and blue, providing a good view of Saturn. And the second is the rocky surface. This matches the view of Titan from the period when astronomical artist Chesley Bonestell produced his famous painting “Saturn as Seen from Titan,” which shows a crisp view of the planet, with its rings seen nearly edge-on, low above a row of jagged peaks rising from a snowy plain. But we now know that Titan is shrouded with clouds and the surface is icy, with little volcanic activity, and smoothed by the energetic weather conditions. Nourse depicts his colonists living under a Plexiglas dome, but while that acrylic material might be synthesized from local components on hydrocarbon-rich Titan, Plexiglas becomes quite brittle at extremely low temperatures, and I doubt it would work as an effective barrier between the frigid outer atmosphere and the much warmer atmosphere breathable by humans. Nourse has the colony formed around the mining of the mineral ruthenium, which is vital to the technology of converting solar energy to broadcasted power (that mineral does exist, and has some unique electrical properties, but the properties Nourse attributes to it here involve a bit of artistic license). Moreover, the mineral is gathered from tunnels through rock, which are filled with an oxygen-based atmosphere the miners can breathe. But not only would the presence of that element be unlikely in the icy surface material on Titan, keeping tunnels warm enough for humans to work and breath in would probably cause melting and collapse. One thing Nourse describes accurately is the jet aircraft built by one of the characters. Unlike jets on Earth, which gather oxygen from the atmosphere to mix with hydrocarbon-based fuels, a jet on Titan would gather hydrocarbons from the atmosphere to mix with oxygen carried as fuel. And welding would be different as well, as you wouldn’t need acetylene for the torch, just oxygen released into the atmosphere. These are perfect examples of the topsy-turvy conditions that make Titan one of the coolest bodies in the Solar System. Trouble on Titan Perhaps because the book is intended for younger readers, Nourse begins with a preface explaining some of the unique conditions of Titan, and the challenges of traveling in space. When the narrative starts, it is from the viewpoint of young Tucker Benedict, who has just graduated from high school in Denver and is traveling home to New York by jet. In his pocket, he has an acceptance letter and scholarship offer from the Polytechnic Institute of Earth. The stewardess gives him a telegram received just after they departed. He is delighted to find it is from his father, a Colonel in the Security Commission, who has returned early from a mission on Mars and will meet him in New York. The two of them are quite close, as his father raised him alone after Tucker’s mother died while he was young, although as Tucker has gotten older, his father has spent more and more time away on missions around the Solar System. Tucker then spends some time musing about the world he lives in, where solar power is gathered by massive solar energy converters, and then beamed to buildings, vehicles, and devices all around the planet. This energy conversion process is made possible by the mineral ruthenium, which comes from a mining colony on the moon Titan. But Tucker is not interested in this technology, because his passion is space travel, where he wants to make a career. When Tucker tells his father news of his scholarship, though, he doesn’t get the reaction he expected. His father is proud, but subdued. It turns out he had hoped to take Tucker to Titan on his next mission, but it’s a long journey, and Tucker cannot accompany him and accept the scholarship. There is unrest at the mining colony, which the Colonel must investigate. Titan was originally a penal colony, and while the original convicts are long dead, the miners have a reputation for being unreliable and difficult. The Colonel has to visit his office, so Tucker returns to their apartment and begins opening mail. There is a strange letter addressed to his father, purportedly from him…one Tucker didn’t send. Rather than open it with the pull tab, Tucker slices it open with a razor, and finds it contains a slab of incendiary material, which he neutralizes by soaking it in water. He realizes that someone wants to kill his father, probably to prevent him from investigating the situation on Titan. And Tucker decides he must put aside his scholarship for now and travel to Titan with his father in order to protect him. He decides to keep the assassination attempt a secret for now, as his father might not want him along if he knew of the danger. (That struck me as an incredibly poor decision, but Tucker is young and naïve, so it fits the character.) The narrative largely skips over their two-month journey to Titan, although during the trip, Tucker does tell his father about the letter-bomb. The idea of an assassination attempt does not surprise his father, as there have been mysterious disappearances of large amounts of supplies and materials on Titan, implying a conspiracy of some sort. They land near the colony, and a half-track vehicle arrives to meet them. It is the elected head of the mining colony, Anson Torm. He bluntly tells the Colonel that unless the government offers some concessions to the miners, the Earth may have seen its last shipment of ruthenium. Torm is not threatening, just warning that he is losing control of the colony, and an uprising may be imminent. The Colonel is angered, and the two retreat to a cabin for a heated discussion. Tucker takes the opportunity to don a suit and explore the surface, but returns to the ship when someone arrives on a crudely built jet plane. It is Torm’s son, David, who warns that a troublemaker at the colony, Cortell, is taking advantage of Torm’s absence to cause problems. The Colonel, Torm, and Tucker head back to the colony in the half-track. David takes off, and begins to crisscross their path at low altitude. It turns out he is concerned about a possible explosive device, and for good reason, because during one of the passes, there is a large explosion, and his jet slides to a rough landing. The others pick him up, and Torm immediately identifies Cortell as the person who must be behind the murder attempt. They go to the colony, and while the fathers continue their discussions, David takes Tucker on a tour of the colony. Nourse uses this as an opportunity to show the reader what the colony and mining operation are like, and does so smoothly, without the information feeling like an expository lump. It turns out that the two young men are both interested in space travel and rocketry, and they begin to form a friendship. The two of them begin to overcome the prejudice that has built up between the mining colony and Earth over many decades. And this new friendship is strong enough for David to reveal that, while he doesn’t know all the details, the colony is harboring something called The Big Secret, which is the reason for the disappearing supplies the Colonel is investigating. What follows is an exciting tale. There is political upheaval, violence, a desperate drive across Titan in a half-track, and the rushed repair of David’s jet to use in the search for The Big Secret, and to uncover the extent of Cortell’s plot. I can’t reveal much more without spoiling the surprise twist of the ending, but will only say that it is a satisfying conclusion, and an exciting ride to get there. The nature of The Big Secret keeps this book from being yet another book replaying the American Revolution in a futuristic setting. Final Thoughts I’m glad I finally got to read Trouble on Titan, because it turns out to be the best thing I’ve ever read from Alan E. Nourse. The characters are well drawn, Titan is a fascinating setting, and there is plenty of action and adventure to keep the reader turning pages. Nourse delivers a nice twist at the end that is well executed—hinted at as the story progresses without being telegraphed too explicitly in advance. And the friendship between Tucker and David, and their relationship with their fathers, gives the story a strong and satisfying emotional core. There are some dated elements, but this is a story that has held up pretty well in the decades since it was written. And now I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts, either on Trouble on Titan specifically, or Alan E. Nourse’s work in general. And if you have any other books about the fascinating moon Titan to recommend, I’d love to hear about them.[end-mark] The post An Exciting Tale in a Fascinating Setting: <i>Trouble on Titan</i> by Alan E. Nourse appeared first on Reactor.

Books Divergent Veronica Roth on Returning to Divergent Through the Alternate Universe Story The Sixth Faction “When I realized that 15 years later, Divergent was still selling really well, I also realized that I was not going to be able to ignore it in my life.” By Matthew Byrd | Published on April 28, 2026 Photo credit: Nelson Fitch Comment 0 Share New Share Photo credit: Nelson Fitch The reveal of Veronica Roth’s The Sixth Faction quickly became the talk of BookCon 2026. 13 years after the third, and seemingly final, entry in the Divergent series was published, Roth is returning to the YA dystopian series that kicked off her professional writing career and became a phenomenon. However, The Sixth Faction is not a direct continuation of the Divergent series. It is instead the first of two planned entries in an alternate universe re-imagining of that series that are based on the question, “What if Beatrice Prior didn’t choose to join the Dauntless faction?” That concept of revisiting the past to see what may have happened if a few different choices were made is both a fascinating premise and the behind-the-scenes heart of this project. The Sixth Faction and its planned follow-up offer Roth the chance to revisit Divergent and answer a few of her own “What if?” questions. But this isn’t just about seeing what may have happened in a butterfly effect scenario. These works also allow Roth to revisit a story she has taken immense pride in even as she has wrestled with a legacy that has made it difficult to ever truly leave that universe. I recently got the chance to speak with Roth about The Sixth Faction, Divergent, and what it means to find joy in the works you are ultimately still critical of. Buy the Book The Sixth Faction Veronica Roth Buy Book The Sixth Faction Veronica Roth Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Matthew Byrd: First off, congratulations on the announcement.  Veronica Roth: Thank you. Matthew: To jump right into it, I really want to know about the format of these books starting with The Sixth Faction. I’m very curious about how you landed on this approach versus, say, a sequel, spinoff, or prequel. You’ve experimented before with altered universe ideas within this world, but how did you land on committing to this approach? Veronica: I think it goes back to the motivation behind writing them. I had, over the course of 15 years, taken in so much negativity, even though there was a lot of positivity surrounding the series. Because of my particular psychology, I really retained a lot of the negative parts. When I realized that 15 years later, Divergent was still selling really well, I also realized that I was not going to be able to ignore it in my life. I needed to improve my relationship to it. The idea of a sequel or a prequel or an alternate point of view or something like that, it still very much feels like a continuation of what I did before. What I needed to do for myself was to make it feel new. I also thought that this was a fun and playful experiment because it’s just something that we see a little less often. I’m not the first person to play with their own canon, obviously. It felt like a way to appreciate what I loved about the original while still allowing myself to build something that felt new. Matthew: As you mentioned, there have been a few works that have taken similar approaches to this. Are there any specific examples of that approach that you really gravitated towards that inspired you to go this route? Veronica: I think the most common ones that I was aware of were just the alternate point of view tellings. The one I grew up on was Bean’s POV from Ender’s Game. Obviously, Stephenie Meyer did that with Midnight Sun. Mostly, I was aware of those other point of view stories. They don’t alter the canon or play with canon in quite the same way, but they do alter it because inevitably they build new things out of what was there before. So I think that was a point of inspiration for sure. Matthew: You’ve of course written both standalone works and other series since Divergent. How did it compare working on this project versus working on something entirely new? Did it feel riskier or potentially more rewarding? Veronica: I think it was both. I knew the kinds of reactions some people were likely to have to this, so in that sense, it was risky. Emotionally, it was risky because it was returning to this thing that I have developed complicated feelings about. So that part felt a little unsettling. Am I going to enjoy this? Am I going to find joy in this project? The reward was great, though, because I think it really did do what I hoped it would, which is that it helped me to appreciate what I did well in the old series instead of only seeing what I was critical of. Obviously I still have criticisms of my past work, but it was very unbalanced the way that I was looking at it, so this has really helped me with that. Matthew: When did you feel that shift that allowed you to enjoy writing in this world again? Was there anything specific that helped cause that change, or was it really just a process over time? Veronica: I released a couple scenes from a kind of early version of this on my newsletter. It was just like, ‘I’m just going to try this.’ This is low stakes, and if it feels good, then maybe this project is something that I can do. Then, it was about going back and actually making something that helped me to feel the joy. That’s how I’ve always worked. I like to make things, so that’s why I’m a writer. I wasn’t just going to be able to fix my thoughts. I needed to rebuild or build something. Matthew: To what extent do you feel, if at all, these upcoming novels reflect how you would’ve written the Divergent series if you started them now as opposed to when you did? Veronica: My feeling is that the strength of the original series is in the character relationships and those instincts about people and emotions that I had early on. So I’ve tried to preserve that. I think that’s what works for people about the original series, even when they read it now. But what sometimes doesn’t work as well is that the world-building foundation is not as stable. It’s a bit of a fantastical concept. This is not hard-hitting dystopian fiction in the sense of 1984, Brave New World, or Margaret Atwood. It’s not supposed to be. It’s more fantastical than that. But I still think that having more stable rules that undergird your story helps readers go on an emotional journey with the characters. They feel like there’s something stable beneath them. That’s kind of what I worked on with the world-building. It’s not so noticeable, I think, but for me, it felt sturdier than the original. Matthew: How much of your growth and changing preferences as a writer is ultimately reflected in these new books? Veronica: So after the original series came out, I had received a lot of feedback. I decided that I was really going to focus on growth, especially in the areas I felt I was weaker. Every book since then was trying to shore up those weaknesses as a writer and to become stronger. Have a better toolset, basically.  But what actually made The Sixth Faction work is more than that. You can’t go into a work like Divergent, which is supposed to be fun and adventurous, and for young people, and think ‘I’m going to make this smart, I’m going to make this prove myself to people.’ That would be a posture of defense. I don’t think you can make something good out of that defensive posture. So when I wrote Seek the Traitor’s Son, which comes out in May, I kind of learned that it was okay to be the writer that I am. And that means that, yes, I have grown a lot, but also I love a little bit of self-indulgence. I love emotional intimacy. I love a quieter story inside of a big expansive story. Allowing myself to be that way is partly why these books came about. So it was like a balance of those few things. Matthew: I’m glad you mentioned that because I’ve heard you talk before about a preference for more emotional, intimate, character-driven stories. Would you say that The Sixth Faction and its follow-up are more intimate versions of the Divergent trilogy? Veronica: I think so, yeah. It’s hard for me to assess them at this point, but it felt that way to me. They’re much more focused on these people and their dynamic together. And The Sixth Faction feels like a conspiracy thriller in some ways, whereas the original was more like a sort of traditional chosen one narrative. This focus is a little tighter, I think, on people, what they’re doing, and the lies that they’re telling to each other. Matthew: You specifically mentioned world-building and characterization as some of the things you really wanted to focus on. Were there any more specific elements of the series you really wanted to address this time around based on the feedback you received? Veronica: That’s a good question. I mean, there are some plot elements. Obviously, this is a duology and the original is a trilogy, so there was a lot of tightening that happened to make that second book out of the other two books. Just keeping the plot as streamlined as possible and keeping it focused. I think that was probably the biggest challenge. Obviously it applies a little more to the second installment than to the first, but it was definitely part of my plan from the beginning. Matthew: On that note, you’ve spoken before in regards to The Divergent series about wanting to finish the story you set out to write versus perhaps altering it along the way significantly in order to meet reader expectations for what may or may not happen. How did you approach that this time around? Obviously people know how certain plot points end up, but how did you manage to balance reader expectations versus your own hopes for where you want this series to head? Veronica: Well, it’s easy because I didn’t think so much about it. Because this project is primarily for me and for course-correcting my relationship to Divergent. I focused very much on what would please me. Obviously I care about my readers and they got me here, so I’m not looking to disappoint them. I think what will please them most is to tell the strongest story possible and the one with the most integrity. I was just like, what works best for this? This is a new story. We have to treat it that way. What makes this story function? Matthew: Do you ultimately feel like you’re fixing or updating what you did in the past, or is this more like having a different conversation with it? Veronica: No, I think any kind of updating or fixing that happened is a result of me trying to build a story that works as a separate entity. I want to give respect to the me that came before for all the works that she did. So it is not my goal to correct mistakes. I don’t think I could have written it if I thought about it that way because that would’ve been kind of soul crushing. So my intention is to write something new just to make something fun, be playful, be experimental, and experience joy. These are the things that I write books for. Not the only things, but that was what this project was very much about. Matthew: As much as you’re able to discuss it, were there certain rules you followed or feel you had to follow when exploring this alternate timeline? Were there certain moments that you decided were inevitable and were always going to occur versus what could theoretically be altered? Veronica: Yes. There were a couple times I had to make picks. ‘What are my favorite things?’ ‘What do I want to keep?’ Mostly my rules were about character. Even though they’re in different situations and are making different choices and growing in different directions, sometimes they have to feel true to the person that I first described in the original series. So my main focus was on that. But there are a couple little… I would say smaller cheekier moments are maybe a nod to the original. That was fun for me, but mostly it was character-based. Matthew: Speaking of characters, how much of yourself as an author and as a person did you initially put into Tris as a character and how much of who you are now is reflected in the version of her we’re going to see in these new books? Veronica: I wouldn’t say that there’s that much of me in her. She’s really hard on herself. I think that’s probably what we have in common. Other than that, I’m a very reserved and anxious person and I find her to be really kind of bold and impulsive a lot of the time. So there’s not a whole lot that we have in common, although it is really fun to write about someone that you are not like.  Matthew: Is there anybody in the original series or in these new books that you do see more of yourself in? Veronica: I think all the characters have as much of me as each other. They’re not based on me or other people. They grow out of the choices that they’re making. In this new series, early in the story, this Tris… I don’t think I’ll spoil that much by saying this, but something happens early in the story that opens her eyes to more of what’s actually going on in the world around her. I think that disillusionment ends up changing the character most of any of the other choices that she makes. She still feels like Tris, but she’s Tris with her eyes open. I think that is not based on any person, but it feels true to what it must be like to be 16 right now. This is a hard world that we’re living in and they’re aware of all of it. I think it was kind of inspired by that line of thinking about what it must be like to be their age right now. Matthew: You mentioned a new generation of readers, especially younger readers. If there are younger readers who did not read the original series, how would you like for them to engage with these new works? Do you feel that everybody would benefit from reading the original trilogy before they read these new stories? Are they intended to largely stand on their own as something you can jump into right now? Veronica: I think it would be interesting any way you go about it. You could not read the original, that’s fine. Just read this. Or you could read the original and then read this or the reverse. I think any way you do it offers some interesting insights. One thing I would like to do is that I will probably visit schools at some point because that was something I really loved doing when I was writing YA. What I’d love to talk to them about is feeling free to look at your old work and love it while being critical of it at the same time. Because I think with ChatGPT and all of that stuff, they can’t revise essays as much. I think being able to reapproach your old writing is… It’s an important skill that we all need to develop.[end-mark] The Sixth Faction publishes October 6, 2026 with HarperCollins. The post Veronica Roth on Returning to <i>Divergent</i> Through the Alternate Universe Story <i>The Sixth Faction</i> appeared first on Reactor.