Alien Title

by Robert Kroese

258 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 26, 2026

About the author

Robert Kroese's sense of irony was honed growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan - home of the Amway Corporation and the Gerald R. Ford Museum, and the first city in the United States to fluoridate its water supply. In second grade, he wrote his first novel, the saga of Captain Bill and his spaceship Thee Eagle. This turned out to be the high point of his academic career. After barely graduating from Calvin College in 1992 with a philosophy degree, he was fired from a variety of jobs before moving to California, where he stumbled into software development. As this job required neither punctuality nor a sense of direction, he excelled at it. In 2009, he called upon his extensive knowledge of useless information and love of explosions to write his first novel, Mercury Falls. Since then, he has written 18 more books.

Reviews

[blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fine conclusion to the series. Rob is very good at creating a sense of hopelessness and ruling out "happy endings" (if you will), the solutions to which make for satisfying reading. Because the ending here is both kind of awful and very hopeful. Sorta like life, man.

In the last couple of books there was an (apparently) benevolent ally to our protagonists' conundrum, and it looked as though this would be the out. But the whole question of measuring benevolence arises. When someone says they mean well, how do you know? And even if they DO mean well, how do you know that their good intentions won't lead the place good intentions are famous for leading to?

The "out" in this case is set up early on as unthinkable. And it would, under normal circumstances, be unthinkable. But it becomes aspirational when presented with the alternatives. In the end, Ransom and the crew of the Hard Bargain opt for agency. Historically, we know agency is both awful and better than any alternatives, so I rate this a "happy" ending as well as satisfying one.