Last Stop

Wexler (the Shadow Campaigns series) launches his Diamond Knife series with a pulse-pounding sci-fi adventure reminiscent of Joss Whedon’s Firefly and set in a universe in which mantids, giant insectlike creatures, pose a threat to humans. The airship Last Stop is commanded by Quedra Sa-Yool, a disgraced former fleet admiral, and piloted by her brother, Zham. The siblings get a considerable challenge when Zham accepts an assignment to locate a site discovered by a professor, Victor, 20 years earlier, which he believed could be a safe new home for humanity, free of fatal incursions by the mantids. His claims were never verified, but the Last Stop’s new client, Vyacheslav Nikolayevich Avilov, Professor Third Rank of the Loginov Academy, has found a diary purporting to give the precise location of Victor’s find. As the crew undertakes this dangerous expedition, Wexler combines suspense with humor, balancing farce, as in a fight scene featuring pastry and bread used as weapons, with tragedy, as with the reveal of the fate of Zham’s lost love. The worldbuilding is robust enough to sustain a long run. Readers will hope for a quick return to this exciting universe. (Oct.)

Correction: A previous version of this review incorrectly described the Last Stop as a spaceship.