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The Shadow Over Psyche Station
- GenresHorrorScience Fiction
172 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 31, 2026
About the author
Yuval Kordov
9 books59 followersYuval Kordov is a chronically creative nerd, tech professional, husband, and father of two. Over the course of his random life, he has been a radio show DJ, produced experimental electronic music, created the world of Dark Legacies™, and designed custom mechs with LEGO® bricks.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Author
This review was originally posted with additional citations on Off The Shelf.
Disclosure: I was provided a digital copy of this book by the author.
Yuval Kordov is, to state as plainly as possible, an artisan with words.
I’ve been a fan of Kordov’s writing ever since I first encountered it in 2023’s The Hand of God; and longtime followers of the blog might recognize Kordov’s name as that of the editor of my short story The Last Flight for Incensepunk Magazine.
The Shadow Over Psyche Station is, as fans of the genre will probably already have discerned from the title, a sci-fi reimagining of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth. The presence of Lovecraft’s influence in Kordov’s work should not surprise any of us who’ve read his canon (I saw shades of Lovecraft’s The Festival in Kordov’s The World to Come); but there are a lot more influences we could discuss—just to give you an idea of the texture of the novel. As with Kordov’s Orders of Magnitude, the pull of Event Horizon’s gravity is strong here; and, as with Event Horizon, Kordov’s depiction of deep space strikes a similar tone to that which Milton describes Hell in Paradise Lost:
In my SFF Insiders review of Kordov’s Orders of Magnitude I mentioned Neill Blomkamp’s Demonic, which I bring up here in order to say that Psyche Station has echoes of another Blomkamp work: his 2017 Oats Studios-produced short Zygote. There’s bits of Jeff VanderMeer’s works all throughout Psyche Station, and fragments of Lem’s Solaris (Psyche appears, at times, as the malevolent inversion of Lem’s titular planet), Clarke’s 2001 and 2010, Crichton’s Sphere, and Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man (chiefly the stories “Kaleidoscope” and “No Particular Night or Morning”); and Psyche Station bears a similar melancholy to that found in James Tiptree Jr.’s “Mother in the Sky with Diamonds” (in 10,000 Light Years From Home). But, perhaps my most important point of comparison—for those exact kind of sickos like me: if you’ve ever wanted a book that felt like the opening hours of exploring the USG Ishimura in Dead Space, this is the book.
The story of Psyche Station follows Marcus O., an assessor for the Martian empire, assigned to check out one of the empire’s distant stations in the asteroid belt; a station which has been aggressively delinquent in its scheduled ore shipments back the Red Planet. Additionally, eyewitness reports of what’s been going on in and around the station have been… worrisome. And there’s your setup. Are these simply space-OSHA violations… or something else?
Though it begins slowly, methodically laying out the setting and Marcus’ motivations, the story of Psyche Station is taut and—for lack of anything more flowery—page-turnable. I breezed through the book in two sittings, and its gradual build-up leads to a series of wild conclusory chapters that left my palms sweaty. Though not nearly as bombastic as any of Kordov’s previous works, Psyche Station thrives on its atmosphere (especially when Marcus’ own is in short supply). It is grimy and claustrophobic (in the style of my dearly beloved Alien), and Kordov makes sure that all of Marcus’ senses are captured on the page: with special attention paid to smell.
As one might expect from a story like this, there are few properly human characters in the story, but some of my favorite moments came from Marcus’ interactions with Psyche’s survivors. One in particular, a priest still clinging to his vocation amidst the darkness, provides two of the best moments in the book (one that nearly made me SCREAM with excitement when I realized what was happening). It’s great stuff. There’s a whole scene with Marcus attending a mass given by this priest which is one of my favorite chapters in a book—a very human experience that anchors the characters as real people. All too often stories like this can present their characters simply as two-dimensional vehicles for exciting story beats, but Kordov always puts in the work to make his characters feel like fully developed, real persons (relatedly, one might assume that this is why Kordov never shies away from documenting, in detail, how his characters relieve themselves—Marcus has two of these scenes before the main action begins).
And of course, not all the characters in a setting such as this need be flesh and blood. Perhaps my favorite element of the book is Kordov’s inclusion of a mysterious, illicit AI system aboard the woe-begotten station. The Martian empire appears to be right on the edge of their own Butlerian Jihad, as we learn that it is illegal to use “processing power to simulate a human being;” And Marcus later muses that “The station mainframe couldn’t be trusted, not fully, given the artificial intelligence poisoning its circuits” (my emphasis). The way the AI manifests itself evokes the same kind of philosophical explorations found in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and in its filmic sequel Blade Runner 2049. The AI is there to fulfill Marcus’ needs and desires, whatever they may be. Is this not how generative AI is being sold to us right now? To make things easier, to lift our burdens and free us from the turmoil of thinking for ourselves? Give yourself to the computer, it will keep you safe. It will provide you comfort and solace. The acronym by which the Kordov’s AI system is named is delightfully on the nose (it made me laugh out loud—complimentary!), but I will leave it to readers to discover.
Broadly, The Shadow Over Psyche Station explores an idea I’ve thought about often in my own work, and an idea Kordov himself has explored elsewhere in his fiction—the idea of deep space as being anathema to our human connection to God. In Orders of Magnitude, a comparison is drawn between the Moon and the Tower of Babel (though in the Dark Legacies books space doesn’t seem to exist at all—just a pitch black, moonless night sky over the Earth; an aesthetically different but no less thematically similar separation from God, the vanishing of “the heavens” leaving us all alone on the Earth); but in Psyche Station the comparison between settings is not so explicit. It is simply distance—absence from the comforting shelter of Mother Earth, from the place that was created for us. What evils might we encounter the further we remove ourselves from that home? Does the atmosphere of Earth provide us with spiritual protection as well as physical? Perhaps there is only one way to know for sure. Psyche Station’s characters seem to already know: “Space is not empty,” says Psyche’s priest. “It is full. Of evil.” We might especially worry when this priest tells Marcus that the rest of the station’s occupants “go outside to pray now.”
For those completely unfamiliar with Kordov’s work, I think I’d recommend starting here—as Psyche Station is, in my opinion, the most straightforward of his books. Marcus O. is just a guy trying to do his job—not quite so blue-collar as many archetypal heroes of the genre, but as far as motivations go it’s about as simple as they come. Unfortunately for Marcus, his job is taking him to the edge of explored space, to the darkest pocket of the asteroid belt. But, for how relatively straightforward the narrative is, that does not mean it is without clever design. Though it felt like the closing chapters were leading towards an ambiguous ending—which wouldn’t have bothered me—the epilogue brought all Psyche Station’s loose story threads back together, just in time for one final punch to the gut.
All-in-all, a big recommend here from me (no surprise!). You can secure a copy of the book for yourself on March 31!
Disclosure: I was provided a digital copy of this book by the author.
“Space is the event horizon between Creation and uncreation. The void in which foul things linger.”
Yuval Kordov is, to state as plainly as possible, an artisan with words.
I’ve been a fan of Kordov’s writing ever since I first encountered it in 2023’s The Hand of God; and longtime followers of the blog might recognize Kordov’s name as that of the editor of my short story The Last Flight for Incensepunk Magazine.
The Shadow Over Psyche Station is, as fans of the genre will probably already have discerned from the title, a sci-fi reimagining of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth. The presence of Lovecraft’s influence in Kordov’s work should not surprise any of us who’ve read his canon (I saw shades of Lovecraft’s The Festival in Kordov’s The World to Come); but there are a lot more influences we could discuss—just to give you an idea of the texture of the novel. As with Kordov’s Orders of Magnitude, the pull of Event Horizon’s gravity is strong here; and, as with Event Horizon, Kordov’s depiction of deep space strikes a similar tone to that which Milton describes Hell in Paradise Lost:
Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light
In my SFF Insiders review of Kordov’s Orders of Magnitude I mentioned Neill Blomkamp’s Demonic, which I bring up here in order to say that Psyche Station has echoes of another Blomkamp work: his 2017 Oats Studios-produced short Zygote. There’s bits of Jeff VanderMeer’s works all throughout Psyche Station, and fragments of Lem’s Solaris (Psyche appears, at times, as the malevolent inversion of Lem’s titular planet), Clarke’s 2001 and 2010, Crichton’s Sphere, and Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man (chiefly the stories “Kaleidoscope” and “No Particular Night or Morning”); and Psyche Station bears a similar melancholy to that found in James Tiptree Jr.’s “Mother in the Sky with Diamonds” (in 10,000 Light Years From Home). But, perhaps my most important point of comparison—for those exact kind of sickos like me: if you’ve ever wanted a book that felt like the opening hours of exploring the USG Ishimura in Dead Space, this is the book.
The story of Psyche Station follows Marcus O., an assessor for the Martian empire, assigned to check out one of the empire’s distant stations in the asteroid belt; a station which has been aggressively delinquent in its scheduled ore shipments back the Red Planet. Additionally, eyewitness reports of what’s been going on in and around the station have been… worrisome. And there’s your setup. Are these simply space-OSHA violations… or something else?
Though it begins slowly, methodically laying out the setting and Marcus’ motivations, the story of Psyche Station is taut and—for lack of anything more flowery—page-turnable. I breezed through the book in two sittings, and its gradual build-up leads to a series of wild conclusory chapters that left my palms sweaty. Though not nearly as bombastic as any of Kordov’s previous works, Psyche Station thrives on its atmosphere (especially when Marcus’ own is in short supply). It is grimy and claustrophobic (in the style of my dearly beloved Alien), and Kordov makes sure that all of Marcus’ senses are captured on the page: with special attention paid to smell.
As one might expect from a story like this, there are few properly human characters in the story, but some of my favorite moments came from Marcus’ interactions with Psyche’s survivors. One in particular, a priest still clinging to his vocation amidst the darkness, provides two of the best moments in the book (one that nearly made me SCREAM with excitement when I realized what was happening). It’s great stuff. There’s a whole scene with Marcus attending a mass given by this priest which is one of my favorite chapters in a book—a very human experience that anchors the characters as real people. All too often stories like this can present their characters simply as two-dimensional vehicles for exciting story beats, but Kordov always puts in the work to make his characters feel like fully developed, real persons (relatedly, one might assume that this is why Kordov never shies away from documenting, in detail, how his characters relieve themselves—Marcus has two of these scenes before the main action begins).
And of course, not all the characters in a setting such as this need be flesh and blood. Perhaps my favorite element of the book is Kordov’s inclusion of a mysterious, illicit AI system aboard the woe-begotten station. The Martian empire appears to be right on the edge of their own Butlerian Jihad, as we learn that it is illegal to use “processing power to simulate a human being;” And Marcus later muses that “The station mainframe couldn’t be trusted, not fully, given the artificial intelligence poisoning its circuits” (my emphasis). The way the AI manifests itself evokes the same kind of philosophical explorations found in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and in its filmic sequel Blade Runner 2049. The AI is there to fulfill Marcus’ needs and desires, whatever they may be. Is this not how generative AI is being sold to us right now? To make things easier, to lift our burdens and free us from the turmoil of thinking for ourselves? Give yourself to the computer, it will keep you safe. It will provide you comfort and solace. The acronym by which the Kordov’s AI system is named is delightfully on the nose (it made me laugh out loud—complimentary!), but I will leave it to readers to discover.
Broadly, The Shadow Over Psyche Station explores an idea I’ve thought about often in my own work, and an idea Kordov himself has explored elsewhere in his fiction—the idea of deep space as being anathema to our human connection to God. In Orders of Magnitude, a comparison is drawn between the Moon and the Tower of Babel (though in the Dark Legacies books space doesn’t seem to exist at all—just a pitch black, moonless night sky over the Earth; an aesthetically different but no less thematically similar separation from God, the vanishing of “the heavens” leaving us all alone on the Earth); but in Psyche Station the comparison between settings is not so explicit. It is simply distance—absence from the comforting shelter of Mother Earth, from the place that was created for us. What evils might we encounter the further we remove ourselves from that home? Does the atmosphere of Earth provide us with spiritual protection as well as physical? Perhaps there is only one way to know for sure. Psyche Station’s characters seem to already know: “Space is not empty,” says Psyche’s priest. “It is full. Of evil.” We might especially worry when this priest tells Marcus that the rest of the station’s occupants “go outside to pray now.”
For those completely unfamiliar with Kordov’s work, I think I’d recommend starting here—as Psyche Station is, in my opinion, the most straightforward of his books. Marcus O. is just a guy trying to do his job—not quite so blue-collar as many archetypal heroes of the genre, but as far as motivations go it’s about as simple as they come. Unfortunately for Marcus, his job is taking him to the edge of explored space, to the darkest pocket of the asteroid belt. But, for how relatively straightforward the narrative is, that does not mean it is without clever design. Though it felt like the closing chapters were leading towards an ambiguous ending—which wouldn’t have bothered me—the epilogue brought all Psyche Station’s loose story threads back together, just in time for one final punch to the gut.
All-in-all, a big recommend here from me (no surprise!). You can secure a copy of the book for yourself on March 31!
April 17, 2026
Lovecraft meets Ad Astra
Beautiful and distinctive, disturbing and uncomfortable. Kordov has a way of putting you in the head - and in this case, the spacesuit - of his leads, and in this story it was not an easy place to be.
Lovecraft-in-space is already a strong pitch, but it's the added flair of Kordov's gorgeous prose and eye for hard sci-fi details that really sold me. There is great horror in unreliable space technology, and in the isolation and vulnerability that it creates. Inevitability and scale play a huge part in this too, all things that Kordov hits with poetic dread.
Brilliant read, whether you're a Lovecraft fan or not. Father James better show up again, too, just saying.
Beautiful and distinctive, disturbing and uncomfortable. Kordov has a way of putting you in the head - and in this case, the spacesuit - of his leads, and in this story it was not an easy place to be.
Lovecraft-in-space is already a strong pitch, but it's the added flair of Kordov's gorgeous prose and eye for hard sci-fi details that really sold me. There is great horror in unreliable space technology, and in the isolation and vulnerability that it creates. Inevitability and scale play a huge part in this too, all things that Kordov hits with poetic dread.
Brilliant read, whether you're a Lovecraft fan or not. Father James better show up again, too, just saying.
July 7, 2026
Weird, in a good way. Just finished, and I'm intrigued enough to go and hunt down more by this author.
Review of advance copy received from Author
This is the kind of horror I'm actively in search for.
Some people are able to read Lovecraft for the sake of experiencing the existential horror while overlooking the philosophical aspects of his works. I'm not one of them. Someone once said that the worst possible sin a piece of fiction can commit is to preach despair; I wholeheartedly agree. That's why I've been asking myself for quite some time now: Is cosmic horror redeemable in any fashion?
Writers like Andrew Gillsmith and Yuval Kordov have been proving that yes, it is possible, especially within the tenets of the incensepunk genre.
Supernatural hope is born of faith. In caring for faith, incensepunk offers a way out of despair and is able to address dark topics without ever overwhelming its readers with grief or melancholy. There's no talk about ultradimensional deities that have no care for human affairs. We're speaking about the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the One who says that all hairs of our head are counted and who will personally redeem us through His Messiah. There's hope for, as the Lord said through His prophet, "I have loved you with an everlasting love."
In addition to that, is there any cosmic threat more dreadful than invisible enemies who never cease to tempt us and try to corrupt our souls through avarice and idolatry? Still, Scripture tells us to not fear our tempters. Our biggest fear should be falling into temptation and repeating the infidelity first committed by Adam and Eve, betraying our covenant with the living God.
Even so, we fear, and our fear propels us to throw ourselves into God's hands. That is the beauty and soul of incensepunk: a light amid overwhelming odds.
In "The Shadow Over Psyche Station," we reenter the world begun by "The See of Tranquility" and follow an imperial assessor as he inspects the condition of a space station purposed to mining operations in an asteroid. Of course, the crew is apparently missing. Aside from a suspicious AI hologram, the only sane being available is a Catholic priest struggling to deal with their situation. We soon discover that the crew found some impossible thing hiding in the core of the asteroid; at this point, it's hard to say which is more dreadful, what they found or the price they paid for worshipping it.
Sometimes, it seems, I try too hard to be an Aristotelian, despite our modern prejudices. Still, I'm of the strong opinion that we were meant to discover and explore outer space, but not inhabit it. It's too alien for our nature—like dropping a fish inside a volcano and expecting it to adapt to its new environment in a few seconds.
It's another topic brilliantly developed in this story, regardless of what we may think about it.
Some people are able to read Lovecraft for the sake of experiencing the existential horror while overlooking the philosophical aspects of his works. I'm not one of them. Someone once said that the worst possible sin a piece of fiction can commit is to preach despair; I wholeheartedly agree. That's why I've been asking myself for quite some time now: Is cosmic horror redeemable in any fashion?
Writers like Andrew Gillsmith and Yuval Kordov have been proving that yes, it is possible, especially within the tenets of the incensepunk genre.
Supernatural hope is born of faith. In caring for faith, incensepunk offers a way out of despair and is able to address dark topics without ever overwhelming its readers with grief or melancholy. There's no talk about ultradimensional deities that have no care for human affairs. We're speaking about the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the One who says that all hairs of our head are counted and who will personally redeem us through His Messiah. There's hope for, as the Lord said through His prophet, "I have loved you with an everlasting love."
In addition to that, is there any cosmic threat more dreadful than invisible enemies who never cease to tempt us and try to corrupt our souls through avarice and idolatry? Still, Scripture tells us to not fear our tempters. Our biggest fear should be falling into temptation and repeating the infidelity first committed by Adam and Eve, betraying our covenant with the living God.
Even so, we fear, and our fear propels us to throw ourselves into God's hands. That is the beauty and soul of incensepunk: a light amid overwhelming odds.
In "The Shadow Over Psyche Station," we reenter the world begun by "The See of Tranquility" and follow an imperial assessor as he inspects the condition of a space station purposed to mining operations in an asteroid. Of course, the crew is apparently missing. Aside from a suspicious AI hologram, the only sane being available is a Catholic priest struggling to deal with their situation. We soon discover that the crew found some impossible thing hiding in the core of the asteroid; at this point, it's hard to say which is more dreadful, what they found or the price they paid for worshipping it.
Sometimes, it seems, I try too hard to be an Aristotelian, despite our modern prejudices. Still, I'm of the strong opinion that we were meant to discover and explore outer space, but not inhabit it. It's too alien for our nature—like dropping a fish inside a volcano and expecting it to adapt to its new environment in a few seconds.
It's another topic brilliantly developed in this story, regardless of what we may think about it.
May 29, 2026
Wow, that was good. Really good.
Marcus O is a representative of the Martian empire on a tour of mining colonies in the asteroid belt. Each colony tries to play themselves up at the expense of the others with Psyche Station catching particular blame from the other mining colonies. Then Marcus goes to the last stop on the tour, he goes to Psyche Station.
The atmosphere in this book is excellent. It starts well before the arrival on Psyche Station with the shuttle trip there but the atmosphere of Psyche itself cranks the isolation, disorientation and claustrophobia way up. Marcus' navigating around Psyche was continually tense.
I can't say the climax was surprising, based on the title I had a strong hunch about how the story would progress but the story built dread very well even with me guessing at some of the plot points.
I really liked Father James who provides a bit of light in an otherwise very dark story. I really liked the hints at the broader setting and the way the book implies that things have gone pear shaped everywhere.
Overall, it was really good. The atmosphere is what I enjoyed most. I'm still noodling some of the ideas presented here and in Orders of Magnitude, the idea of space is certainly a chilling one.
Marcus O is a representative of the Martian empire on a tour of mining colonies in the asteroid belt. Each colony tries to play themselves up at the expense of the others with Psyche Station catching particular blame from the other mining colonies. Then Marcus goes to the last stop on the tour, he goes to Psyche Station.
The atmosphere in this book is excellent. It starts well before the arrival on Psyche Station with the shuttle trip there but the atmosphere of Psyche itself cranks the isolation, disorientation and claustrophobia way up. Marcus' navigating around Psyche was continually tense.
I can't say the climax was surprising, based on the title I had a strong hunch about how the story would progress but the story built dread very well even with me guessing at some of the plot points.
I really liked Father James who provides a bit of light in an otherwise very dark story. I really liked the hints at the broader setting and the way the book implies that things have gone pear shaped everywhere.
Overall, it was really good. The atmosphere is what I enjoyed most. I'm still noodling some of the ideas presented here and in Orders of Magnitude, the idea of space is certainly a chilling one.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Marcus is sent to investigate the state of affairs on the space station overseeing mining operations on the asteroid 16 Psyche. The operations are rather vital to the survival of the Martian colonies, so it's an important investigation.
He has a bad feeling about the whole thing, but doggedly sticks to his assignment, bringing a level of quiet heroism to an otherwise rather hapless individual caught in a nightmare scenario.
I'm normally not a fan of abandoned spaceship tropes (too scary for me) or slow-burn descriptions of space hardware, etc. But this one is so well-done, I couldn't stop reading. The fact that Marcus has lived all his life on either Mars or in space means he's in poor health and constantly has to boost himself with various drug concoctions. This adds to the mystery of what is actually happening on the station: how much of what he thinks he's encountering is due to sleep deprivation, and how much to the distortion of his perceptions and understanding?
But don't worry, it's not all in his head.
Kordov's layering of intrigue and slowly building dread, punctuated by occasional jump scares, is masterful. The worldbuilding is rich without being overpowering.
Fans of cosmic horror should not miss this one!
He has a bad feeling about the whole thing, but doggedly sticks to his assignment, bringing a level of quiet heroism to an otherwise rather hapless individual caught in a nightmare scenario.
I'm normally not a fan of abandoned spaceship tropes (too scary for me) or slow-burn descriptions of space hardware, etc. But this one is so well-done, I couldn't stop reading. The fact that Marcus has lived all his life on either Mars or in space means he's in poor health and constantly has to boost himself with various drug concoctions. This adds to the mystery of what is actually happening on the station: how much of what he thinks he's encountering is due to sleep deprivation, and how much to the distortion of his perceptions and understanding?
But don't worry, it's not all in his head.
Kordov's layering of intrigue and slowly building dread, punctuated by occasional jump scares, is masterful. The worldbuilding is rich without being overpowering.
Fans of cosmic horror should not miss this one!
June 14, 2026
This, by the author's own words, is a retelling of The Shadow Over Innsmouth set in space. Lovecraft wrote cosmic horror, so that should be a good match. And it is, to an extent. It is a nicely written story, and it certainly invokes the feel of Lovecraft. Where it falls down is in setting the rules for the universe.
The story is set in a future in which there has been a war between Earth and Mars, which seems to have led to a breakdown in relations between Earth and Mars and the mining colonies in the asteroid belt. What isn't explained, and is only revealed in snatches through the story, is the strong religious foundation of the society. Kordov has written another story which is set in the same universe, and reading that first may provide the background which would have been helpful.
That aside, it was a well-written horror among the stars story.
The story is set in a future in which there has been a war between Earth and Mars, which seems to have led to a breakdown in relations between Earth and Mars and the mining colonies in the asteroid belt. What isn't explained, and is only revealed in snatches through the story, is the strong religious foundation of the society. Kordov has written another story which is set in the same universe, and reading that first may provide the background which would have been helpful.
That aside, it was a well-written horror among the stars story.
June 22, 2026
Settle in for a cerebral, atmospheric tale of gradually rising dread and impending doom. Our protagonist is an assessor for a future solar system-wide empire. He’s sent to report on the compliance of a space station that, everyone along the way insists, just isn’t right. The longer he stays, the more that prediction seems true. Something is wrong here—with the station, and with the assessor himself.
The great strength of this book is the author’s prose. Yuval Kordov is an exemplary wordsmith, and his craftsmanship with language keeps the pages turning even as the story takes its time heating up. It’s a richly-imagined universe, and fans of hard scifi will feel right at home, until the horror hits full force.
Imagine the mystery slowly ratcheted up, one notch at a time, until mystery becomes unease, becomes fear, becomes terror.
If you like that kind of story, grab this today.
The great strength of this book is the author’s prose. Yuval Kordov is an exemplary wordsmith, and his craftsmanship with language keeps the pages turning even as the story takes its time heating up. It’s a richly-imagined universe, and fans of hard scifi will feel right at home, until the horror hits full force.
Imagine the mystery slowly ratcheted up, one notch at a time, until mystery becomes unease, becomes fear, becomes terror.
If you like that kind of story, grab this today.
March 31, 2026
A scifi retelling of Lovecraft's masterpiece Shadow of Innsmouth, absolutely dripping with atmosphere. You feel the claustrophobia of the corrupted space station, and the tension between purity and prison of Marcus's powered space suit. Spared from pure grimdarkness by a thin sliver of light via the incensepunk influence of the church in dark times, plus a couple delightful easter eggs for fans of Kordov's other work. Plus, if you've ever wonder how they go to the bathroom in a space suit, this book never leaves you ungrounded on the details!
A must read for fans of space station horror such as Event Horizon and Dead Space, as well as cosmic horror buffs.
A must read for fans of space station horror such as Event Horizon and Dead Space, as well as cosmic horror buffs.
June 22, 2026
Great book. It had genuinely creepy moments. The author excels at providing vivid descriptions and visual details. The book has a great creepy atmosphere. I got elements of the Thing, Lovecraft and Corey.
The book is a short read and I like this. I think this is the avenue for indie authors to explore. We need MORE books you can sit down and read in one or two sittings. We don't need pages and pages or description or internal monologue. Give us the big picture, the idea. Let us as the reader flesh out the rest with our own imagination. Works especially well with horror. No one knows more of what scares us than our own subconscious.
Hats off to Kordov, thanks for the story.
The book is a short read and I like this. I think this is the avenue for indie authors to explore. We need MORE books you can sit down and read in one or two sittings. We don't need pages and pages or description or internal monologue. Give us the big picture, the idea. Let us as the reader flesh out the rest with our own imagination. Works especially well with horror. No one knows more of what scares us than our own subconscious.
Hats off to Kordov, thanks for the story.
June 30, 2026
Spec fiction meets cosmic horror isn’t usually my bag, but there are exceptions to every rule and The Shadow Over Psyche Station is one of them. Having read this author previously, I knew I’d be getting precise and economical prose. What I didn’t know I’d be getting was a beautifully realised setting, supremely claustrophobic, nasty, dispiriting, and in my opinion, every bit as horrifying as the evil lurking at said station. Something has been made of the religious element of this story, but for me, that really elevates it, grounding the events in something both familiar and with apocalyptic potentialities. Highly recommended.
June 23, 2026
Chilling, atmospheric, and deeply spooky. There's not much I can say without giving spoilers, but right from the first page Kordov paints a surprisingly relatable picture of a space-bureaucrat at the end of his rope after a long, solo inspection tour. If you like Lovecraft, I highly recommend visiting Psyche Station.
April 9, 2026
Slow burn cosmic horror that is Beacon 23 meets Dead Space, written by Lovecraft; a read that will fill you with existential dread from start to finish and one that, unbeknownst to you, will bury itself under your skin.
Review of advance copy received from Author
impossible....
Did Not Finish
June 6, 2026DNF
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