Exiles (2025) ⭐⭐ by Maison Coile
I read an ebook version.
I’m teetering between 2 and 3 stars with this one. I decided to go with two stars.
Three people have been sent to Mars. When they get there, they find out that there’s something off with the three robots that were sent ahead of them. One is missing, and the other two have grown to be sentient…. but they weren’t programmed to be that way.
There is a threat outside the base, but what is it? Is it the missing robot? Or is it something else?
I loved the premise of this book, and I really wanted to love it, but in the end it missed the mark for me.
The book was great for a little while, but gradually I began to realize that the author doesn’t seem to know what story they’re trying to tell. Is this a psychological drama? Is this a thrilling alien-on-Mars story? Is it a story of childhood trauma resurfacing in an astronaut MD who really shouldn’t have been chosen to go to Mars in the first place?
Unfortunately, the book tries to be all of these, but it doesn’t do any of it well. And, on top of this, it’s trying to be all these things and more without even breaking 230 pages. That being said, the ending drags on and on. I wanted it to be over, but there was always more nonsensical nightmare. At the length of a typical Goosebumps book, the writer should have chosen one element to focus on, rather than making a mess of multiple stories in one.
It also reeks of man writing woman —- a man who doesn’t understand women at all. Or, at least it seems that way, with the way Dana is written in this book. It just doesn’t make sense that she immediately starts falling apart and childhood trauma starts literally rising from the dusty floors of Mars. They’re basically sent on a no-return death mission. I would hope that they’d have come to terms with this before having launched. Apparently the only prerequisite was to have no one at home who cared about them or they cared about, because they all seem to fall apart, but the woman is first.
I want to be nice to this book, because it’s the last book that was written before the author died of cancer in January 2025. It was posthumously published in September of that same year. Maybe his other books are better, but this one wasn’t a winner for me.
