by Barbara Truelove
First sentence: “Awaiting input…”
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Content: There’s violence (so many deaths) and swearing, including multiple f-bombs. It’s in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

Demeter is a ship’s main AI computer – she is responsible for all ship functions on the trip between Earth and Alpha Centauri. So, when she shows up at Alpha Centauri with a ship full of dead people, everyone (well, all the humans) assumes that Demeter’s gone crazy. Except she knows she isn’t: the deaths were supernatural in nature. And (over the decades) as more and more people who ride in her end up dead, she has come to believe that she needs to Do Something about it.

This is much less about the plot – the back matter mentions a werewolf, a reluctant vampire, an engineer built from the dead, and a pharaoh with otherworldly powers, but honestly, they don’t show up until more than halfway through – and more about the vibes. A coworker compared it to Murderbot, because the main characters (there’s also a ship’s medical AI) are AI, but I’m not sure that’s correct. I do think there are similarities, and that if you like Murderbot, you’ll like this one as well. It’s this sentence, that captures the feel, ultimately: “The queer love child of pulp horry and classic sci-fi…” Yep. That’s it, exactly.

Which means it’s campy and silly and funny and clever, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s not exceptional science fiction, but is solid science fiction, and you can’t ask for more than that.