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Lovestruck Maggot
“A fun, propulsive novel with memorable worldbuilding.”—
Kirkus Reviews Magazine (Featured Indie Review)
Semi-Finalist (ongoing)—2026 Cygnus Book Awards
“Lovestruck Maggot is a phenomenal journey. The setting, characters, politics, and culture saturate every paragraph without ever feeling heavy-handed. I would have loved to come back to meet Mona and her Maggots again, but instead I’ll content myself with having spent a perfect few hours with them.”— Independent Book Review (Starred Review)
“I’d hand this to readers who like space opera, science fiction, romance, survival adventure, body horror, dystopian fiction, and weird western-inflected SF with a sharp voice and a taste for the baroque. Lovestruck Maggot is proof that even in the harshest world, love can still be the most explosive substance on the page.”— Literary Titan (Gold Book Award)
A heartbroken scavenger. An intrepid space cowboy. Some very good wood.
The planet Kalderra is known for several things. A blue sun. An oversized, violet moon. Massive craters formed through past volcanic activity. Strange forests comprised of the rarest, most magnificent trees in the galaxy. And kameeba, bizarre creatures whose scavenged parts can smooth skin, extend lives… and power worlds.
Mona “Ripper” Ripple is a Maggot—responsible for harvesting the volatile yet prized remains of recently deceased kameeba. As leader of the elite Karcass Five unit, Mona is the best Maggot that Kalderra has ever known. Tough and ill-tempered, demanding and crude, she’s also on the far side of forty—ancient for one in her trade—with all the scars and wrinkles and terrible memories to match.
Mona Ripple is also in love.
Smitten by a handsome recruit named Darien Vance, Mona revels in finally having something beautiful to call her own. She dares to dream of a picturesque future defined by passionate devotion rather than butchered extraterrestrials. As young Darien sleeps in her acid-burned arms, Mona prepares for their eventual planetary exit… together.
Unfortunately, Mona’s plans unravel when Darien catches the crimson eye of the reviled Countess Desma Ghool, who abducts the young man, adding him to her revolving collection of unwilling paramours.
As warm love gives way to cold rage, Mona sets out on a dangerous mission to liberate Darien from Ghool, a key figure in the galaxy’s ruling Morishita Syndicate, requiring her to forge an unwanted partnership with her least favorite Maggot—a notorious Space Cowboy named Mickie Brass.
Together, the improbable pair embark on a perilous journey that quickly goes beyond mere rescue operation, revealing the twisted history of the planet, the vital role of the kameeba, the horrifying intentions of the native Kalderrans, and what it truly means to be lovestruck.
Semi-Finalist (ongoing)—2026 Cygnus Book Awards
“Lovestruck Maggot is a phenomenal journey. The setting, characters, politics, and culture saturate every paragraph without ever feeling heavy-handed. I would have loved to come back to meet Mona and her Maggots again, but instead I’ll content myself with having spent a perfect few hours with them.”— Independent Book Review (Starred Review)
“I’d hand this to readers who like space opera, science fiction, romance, survival adventure, body horror, dystopian fiction, and weird western-inflected SF with a sharp voice and a taste for the baroque. Lovestruck Maggot is proof that even in the harshest world, love can still be the most explosive substance on the page.”— Literary Titan (Gold Book Award)
A heartbroken scavenger. An intrepid space cowboy. Some very good wood.
The planet Kalderra is known for several things. A blue sun. An oversized, violet moon. Massive craters formed through past volcanic activity. Strange forests comprised of the rarest, most magnificent trees in the galaxy. And kameeba, bizarre creatures whose scavenged parts can smooth skin, extend lives… and power worlds.
Mona “Ripper” Ripple is a Maggot—responsible for harvesting the volatile yet prized remains of recently deceased kameeba. As leader of the elite Karcass Five unit, Mona is the best Maggot that Kalderra has ever known. Tough and ill-tempered, demanding and crude, she’s also on the far side of forty—ancient for one in her trade—with all the scars and wrinkles and terrible memories to match.
Mona Ripple is also in love.
Smitten by a handsome recruit named Darien Vance, Mona revels in finally having something beautiful to call her own. She dares to dream of a picturesque future defined by passionate devotion rather than butchered extraterrestrials. As young Darien sleeps in her acid-burned arms, Mona prepares for their eventual planetary exit… together.
Unfortunately, Mona’s plans unravel when Darien catches the crimson eye of the reviled Countess Desma Ghool, who abducts the young man, adding him to her revolving collection of unwilling paramours.
As warm love gives way to cold rage, Mona sets out on a dangerous mission to liberate Darien from Ghool, a key figure in the galaxy’s ruling Morishita Syndicate, requiring her to forge an unwanted partnership with her least favorite Maggot—a notorious Space Cowboy named Mickie Brass.
Together, the improbable pair embark on a perilous journey that quickly goes beyond mere rescue operation, revealing the twisted history of the planet, the vital role of the kameeba, the horrifying intentions of the native Kalderrans, and what it truly means to be lovestruck.
365 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 1, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 15, 2026
Interesting world and 2 MC's.
Corny ending and love story.
Corny ending and love story.
Review of advance copy received from Author
In Lovestruck Maggot, we follow Mona Ripple, scarred, middle-aged, fiercely competent, and disastrously in love—as she tries to claw a future out of the brutal colony world of Kalderra, where “Maggots” harvest volatile alien carcasses under the shadow of corporate greed, native mystery, and lethal beauty. What begins as a break-for-freedom story, with Mona dreaming of buying out her and Darien’s contracts, quickly widens into something stranger and more dangerous: a planet-scale power struggle wrapped around devotion, exploitation, and the mad hope that love might still mean escape.
What I liked most is that the novel never treats love as a softening agent. It treats it as an accelerant. Mona’s voice has grit under the fingernails: funny, vulgar, wounded, possessive, tender, and a little frightening all at once. I didn’t read her as a neat heroine; I read her as a person whose longing has warped around survival until the two are nearly indistinguishable. That gives the book a welcome asymmetry. The romance is not dainty or idealized. It's hungry, bruised, delusional in places, and therefore weirdly moving. The author understands that desire can make people luminous and ridiculous in the same breath, and he gets a lot of charge out of that contradiction.
I was also taken by the texture of the worldbuilding. Kalderra doesn't feel like wallpaper pasted behind the plot; it feels mined, lit from below, and faintly toxic. The opening planetary report gives the book a sly, cold-blooded frame, and then the novel drops into a much hotter register: banter, violence, class resentment, strange ecologies, and the eerie glamour of the subarashi forests. I especially admired the tonal audacity here: the book can pivot from gallows humor to menace to aching sincerity without losing its footing.
I’d hand this to readers who like space opera, science fiction, romance, survival adventure, body horror, dystopian fiction, and weird western-inflected SF with a sharp voice and a taste for the baroque. It should land especially well for people who want character heat inside a dangerous speculative setting rather than clean hard-scfi sterility. It feels closer to Kameron Hurley than to sleek blockbuster space adventure; there’s also a bit of Gideon the Ninth’s irreverent bite in the way it lets sentiment and savagery share the same room. Lovestruck Maggot is proof that even in the harshest world, love can still be the most explosive substance on the page.
What I liked most is that the novel never treats love as a softening agent. It treats it as an accelerant. Mona’s voice has grit under the fingernails: funny, vulgar, wounded, possessive, tender, and a little frightening all at once. I didn’t read her as a neat heroine; I read her as a person whose longing has warped around survival until the two are nearly indistinguishable. That gives the book a welcome asymmetry. The romance is not dainty or idealized. It's hungry, bruised, delusional in places, and therefore weirdly moving. The author understands that desire can make people luminous and ridiculous in the same breath, and he gets a lot of charge out of that contradiction.
I was also taken by the texture of the worldbuilding. Kalderra doesn't feel like wallpaper pasted behind the plot; it feels mined, lit from below, and faintly toxic. The opening planetary report gives the book a sly, cold-blooded frame, and then the novel drops into a much hotter register: banter, violence, class resentment, strange ecologies, and the eerie glamour of the subarashi forests. I especially admired the tonal audacity here: the book can pivot from gallows humor to menace to aching sincerity without losing its footing.
I’d hand this to readers who like space opera, science fiction, romance, survival adventure, body horror, dystopian fiction, and weird western-inflected SF with a sharp voice and a taste for the baroque. It should land especially well for people who want character heat inside a dangerous speculative setting rather than clean hard-scfi sterility. It feels closer to Kameron Hurley than to sleek blockbuster space adventure; there’s also a bit of Gideon the Ninth’s irreverent bite in the way it lets sentiment and savagery share the same room. Lovestruck Maggot is proof that even in the harshest world, love can still be the most explosive substance on the page.
Review of advance copy
This was an entertaining, gritty story with lots of action and interesting characters. The world building is well done across all the different areas and people of the planet that are visited. I did initially feel confused at how misplaced Mona's love was, but then it becomes apparent that is intentional. Once I accepted that, the musings about her love didn't bother me as much.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews