Mallory has been involved with countless murders. Not because she’s actually murdered anyone but because somehow murders are drawn to her, very Miss Marplesque. While she does a great job of solving the murders she happens to stumble upon, it doesn’t exactly make her popular to be around. When Mallory gets the chance to take refugee on a sentient space station, she’s sure that avoiding the human population is her keep to living a quiet life. Except the same sentient space station has decided to start letting other humans on board as well. When the first group of humans are set to arrive, a new murder of both aliens and humans has Mallory once again sleuthing around.

I’m not sure what I was thinking when I went into this book, but hardcore science fiction was not it. Which is totally fine because I do love me some sci-fi, but I guess I didn’t really connect the dots too well and didn’t realize the sentient space station and aliens were what the story was going to revolve around. I blame sleep deprivation. Regardless, even if I would have realized this, this one took me a hot minute to get into. Mainly because the amount of world building, aka learning all the aliens, understanding which aliens do what etc, really took quite a bit of focus. Mix that in with Mallory’s constant pity party and I almost decided to put this book down. BUT I was super curious as to where the mystery and the premise is so unique that I decided to continue on.

Lafferty does an amazing job creating these alien characters and once I got the hang of things, I really enjoyed their distinct personalities and quirks. I actually enjoyed them more than most of our human characters including Mallory. There are a ton of characters though, with many of these being aliens, so I did find it hard to follow what was happening at first.

In terms of the story itself, I’m not sure what it was, but there felt like something was missing. Or maybe the pacing was off for me. There were lots of things happening at the beginning of the book, but they felt as if they dragged a bit and while everything tied together in the end, I could have done without a few of the smaller events.

Ultimately, this is a fun, quirky, and unique takes on an alien sci-fi story. If you like unique worlds and lots of character building you’ll enjoy this book. I’m invested enough now that I’ll probably read more in this series. 3.5 ★ rounded up to 4 for the uniqueness!

AMAZON | GOODREADS |★★★★

Station Eternity comes out October 4 2022! Huge thank you to Ace & Berkley Publishing Group for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.  If you liked this review please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my instagram @speakingof.books.