Veil by Jonathan Janz is a fast-paced sci-fi action novel about family, what makes a family, and the expectations they have of us and we have of ourselves for them - oh, and about invisible somethings taking people right off the street or out of the park or even right out of their own freakin’ backyard to who knows where for who knows what purpose?

Exiles by Mason Coile (pseudonym of the late Andrew Pyper) drops us in the deep end by outlining the harsh realities of space travel that usually get skimmed over (which, tbh, is fine with me, but that’s because blood is about the only bodily fluid or excretion that doesn’t gross me out. I know. That level of TMI is probably on par with what I’m getting from the first pages of Exiles). 

Reading Orbital was like reading a long poem about the vastness and smallness of Earth - in part through the eyes of four astronauts and two cosmonauts as they experience a sunrise every 90 minutes in their space station orbiting the planet.