Rebecca Thorne
Completed 8/18/2026, Reviewed 8/19/2026
4 stars
I do love my cozy queer genre romances. This surprisingly entertaining tale inspired by the Murderbot series checked off all those boxes. It’s fluff, but so enjoyable, I didn’t mind the cliffhanger at the end. It’s about family, found family, and multiple alien species working together to make a space everyone can enjoy and calling it home. Oh yeah, it’s also about a spaceship’s AI life support system melded with moss dealing with abandonment issues. The prose is decent and the world building pretty fun, but I think the strength of this book lies in its characterization. Between the AI, known simply as Moss, Torian Raznor, and the small cast of side characters, I reveled in the warmth, caring, sarcasm, and the occasional shade getting thrown around. This may not win any big awards, but it certainly won my heart.
Torian is a failed security guard from a smuggling ship. She kissed the Captain, Amelia, once and got demoted. After years of saving every penny from her smuggling gig, she finally has enough to buy a ship to take her sister Celise, who is dying of a rare, recycled-air reaction on their home space station, to a beautiful, terraformed planet so she can recover. The ship is questionable, based on unknown technology and covered in moss. Turns out the ship, aka Moss, has been abandoned by the last of an alien race for about 133 years. Moss resents their old owner/creator and lays the charm on for Torian. It takes her to the terraformed planet, only to find out she and her sister are too old take the residency exam. On that trip, she meets the original Nylarian owner/creator Dutch, his Draic husband Zen, and finds an old space station abandoned by the Nylarians. The station is huge, filled with plants and trees, creating the perfect atmosphere to help Celise and maybe cure her. Just maybe, they can all work together to create a safe place for people with Celise’s disease while restoring an historic monument.
I loved Torian. She’s failed at a lot of endeavors, but talks a good talk, getting into previously unreachable situations. Despite the negativity from Amelia, Celise, and others, she does her damnedest to pilot Moss with only a community college certificate on a flight simulator. She’s driven by her persistence in keeping Celise from succumbing to the illness. I loved her determination. I also really enjoyed her relationship with Moss. Tenuous at first, she promises she won’t abandon Moss the way Dutch did. Together they look for alternative living solutions.
Moss is a hoot. The chapters alternate between 3rd person Torian and 1st person Moss. Loved getting the different perspectives. Moss is persnickety and resentful while Torian proves herself an uncommon, caring human. It took me a little while to warm up to Moss, though, not being entirely trusting of an AI. I liked his regular self-aggrandizement in sentences like, “Celise will like me. But then again, everyone does. I’m a delight.” (A possible nod to Sheldon on “The Big Bang Theory”) But Moss does grow (heh) and change despite not admitting to having feelings.
I loved the side characters too. Celise seems to have accepted her fate on their home space station. It takes some effort to motivate her to try for better, even if they fail. Amelia is a cardboard smuggler with a heart of gold. Dutch is a big old queen, and his butch husband Zen is a gentle gargoyle-like hulk. I don’t completely trust Dutch and neither does Moss. Guess I identified with Moss more than I thought. 😊
I give this book four stars out of five. Its entertainment value supersedes the rather simplistic let’s all just get along tropes. But I can never get sick of the found family trope. This is near and dear to my heart, especially as I’ve been reconnecting with found family from my college and post college days. There are many good people out there, but the ones who still love you ten, twenty, forty years after scant contact (if any) are the keepers, once you get out of your own way.
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