Leanne Olson

By Ness Brown

Releasing April 4, 2023 from Tor Nightfire

I enjoyed this action-filled, quick novella from debut author Ness Brown.  

In The Scourge Between Stars, Jacklyn is acting captain on a starship fleeing a failed human colony.  The colonists are trying to find their way back to Earth, with dwindling rations and resources, rebellion, and strange attacks from space around them. Jacklyn soon discovers a few threat, crawling through the walls of the ship.

I went in expecting this to be horror but it has more of a sci-fi adventure feel to me (think Aliens rather than Alien).  Once I let go of my expectations for spookiness I found it was a lot of fun.

Jacklyn is a great character: she’s strong and smart, but exhausted and affected by trauma (including the death of most of her family). She had so much character growth in such a short book.  

I wish there’d been room to flesh out some of the other characters in addition to Jacklyn.  There are so many characters at times I wanted a chart with their names and roles on the ship, I found it a bit confusing. However, it did help to make the world of the story feel grounded.

The action scenes are fun and easy to visualize, with a bit of gore (but not too much).  I loved the stakes in this novella: I completely believed in the alien threat, and I liked the background of simmering rebellion on the ship. This really felt like humanity’s last chance.

At times, I felt there was so much going on in this novella that it could easily have been a novel, and a few plot points were sped passed a little too quickly.  But overall, I really had fun reading this, and I look forward to reading Ness Brown’s next book.

🌟🌟🌟🌟

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for my review copy of this book.