Rogue

by Steve DeGroof

Canterbury is one of thousands of ships wandering interstellar space. Life on board is quiet, stable, regimented, stagnant.

Siblings Kendal and Rowan are bright, imaginative and adventurous.

Kendal routinely takes “shortcuts” by leaping out of airlocks.
Rowan snoops through Canterbury’s restricted Archives, looking for ancient conspiracies.

In short, they’re “troublemakers”.

When one of Rowan’s wild conspiracy theories turns out to be true, the two (naturally) dive head-first into a cascade of events involving a rogue planet, an unexpected visitor, a malevolent AI, and the very reason behind Canterbury’s existence.

Suit up. Slay the monster. Save the day.

At least that’s the plan.

217 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 7, 2020

About the author

Steve is an expat Canadian who now lives in North Carolina. He has worked, at one time or other, as: a TV repairman, a security guard at a children's hospital, a janitor in a strip club, and a software developer for a regional bank. He is currently retired.

He honed his writing skills publishing the webcomic “Tree Lobsters” and screenwriting for the YouTube series “Death by Puppets”. When not busy refining his art, such as a clock in the shape of Rick Astley that chimes “Never Gonna Give You Up” on the hour (for which he is sincerely sorry), he published six collections of short stories and two novels, with no plans of stopping any time soon.

Reviews

[Bjørnar Tuftin]

I enjoyed this book from the very beginning, but even so it got better along the way. The complexity of the setup surprised me, for whatever reason, and I really enjoyed the world building DeGroof did in the first half of the book. For me personally it fell just a little flat at the end, but that is just because I'm a middle aged SF veteran who has some pet peeves and DeGroof can't really be blamed from using a perfectly normal SF-idea just because I personally have grown to hate it.

I've only read one of his short story collections, and have kept thinking I should read more of them, but having enjoyed this novel will hopefully inspire me to go back and actually do so.

[Emily Portman]

I haven’t read sci-fi for a while so this one was a very welcome change for me! Rogue is just the book for you if you often find yourself mulling over life on other planets or a life away from Earth. It had two very unique main characters with a whole host of other memorable ones and a plot to completely satisfy that inner space nerd.

If you’re looking for an addictive sci-fi novel that forces you to think of the endless possibilities of space and artificial intelligence, then this is the perfect book for you! This was such a great read with strong characters, unexpected twists and a detailed plot which provides food for thought. I’d highly recommend this for fans of sci-fi. Also, if you’re new to the genre, this is the perfect shorter story to get you started!

You can see my full review over on my blog: https://aquintillionwords.com/2020/09...