Moss’d In Space by Rebecca Thorne

Book Review

Melody Bowles

Rebecca Thorne’s Tomes and Tea quadrilogy completed last year with Alchemy and a Cup of Tea. While that series was firmly rooted in fantasy, this new trilogy takes on the world of sci-fi. It’s easy to see the influence of books like The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, which shares a similar tone. Plant/supercomputer Moss is noted to be inspired by Martha Wells’ Murderbot. If you loved those books, you will probably love this too.

Torian lives on a human space station with her sister Celise. Celise is sick from the artificial air and Torian’s only hope of saving her is to buy a starship to migrate to the planet Rhymarra. However, starships are expensive and the only one Torian can afford is an abandoned, moss-covered alien ship. This is home to Moss, a lonely life support system with an attitude. I like this setup. It’s simple but uses something I haven’t often seen considered in space opera – what’s the air like? And what if it’s not up to scratch?

The book is an amble rather than a run. There were a couple of points in the middle where I wished the plot would hurry up, but Moss was usually entertaining enough to provide a distraction. The book is mostly told from Torian’s point of view, but there are short interludes which provide logs from Moss, which really helps the pacing.

While there are a lot of characters, the book balances them well enough that it doesn’t feel crowded. There are plenty of aliens for Torian to meet and befriend, including scatterbrained genius Dutch, fiercely loyal Zen, and eager scholar Nasra. They are all likable, but the star of this book and the one with the most development is firmly Moss. Hopefully, there will be enough room in the trilogy to delve more fully into the others too.

The usual cosy themes of self-reflection, self-discovery, and found family are all here. There are the beginnings of a romance for Torian with Captain Amelia, a scrappy pilot of a smuggling ship, but it’s not the focus of the story. I expect this subplot will come to the forefront in future books. I am looking forward to it.

Read Moss’d In Space if you’d like a gentle adventure with friendly alien companions among the stars.

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Reader & writer of fantasy fiction, also kicks gremlins out of computers. Always looking for sapphic and/or cosy recs.

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