#massif

I received a free copy from Harper Voyager via Netgalley in exchange for a fair review. Release date September 8th, 2026.

I've read a bit of Nix's adult fantasy and of course his children's novels ages ago, so I was curious about his foray into SF. In Massif, Parnell is captain of a ship attached to a mysterious, spacefaring Massif. When a routine battle in their endless war goes terribly wrong, Parnell is determined to rescue his lost pilot—but in the process, he must explore the deepest secrets of the Massifs...

Massif ran much more classically military SF than I expected, which is, admittedly, not my favorite genre. If you're going to spend half the plot in space battles, I need much more anti-war critique, in the line of Hurley's The Light Brigade. I thought the underlying premise was interesting—humans have discovered space travel, but they're completely dependent on the mountain-sized alien Massifs that move through space on set routes. But all the worldbuilding does with that plot is set up an eternal Earth-Mars space colonization war. Bang bang space marines space guns over the apparently infinite resource of barely colonized worlds. It didn't help that the characterization was relatively shallow, which is fatal with a plot revolving around crew comradery. We shan't even mention the half-baked romance.

I think part of my issue with this book was due to the structure. Effectively, the inciting incident only happened about halfway through the novel. And it feels like the point of the whole book was just to set up the big twist at the end. This is a structure for a short story, not an entire three hundred fifty page novel. But fundamentally, Massif is not focused on topics that interest me. The story is about survival and surviving bad orders, and it's fundamentally plot driven with relatively flat characters. While there's apparently an entire sentient alien measuring scale, we don't learn anything about alien cultures or civilizations. And while the ending obviously sets up a sequel, it seems poised to introduce merely a different kind of war.

Aiguille d'Argentières in the Mont Blanc massif, Alpine region of France

View of the Massif of Mont Blanc in the Alpine region of France