by
On a bleak, icy planet at the edge of the solar system, four friends are held captive. As they struggle to escape and find a way home, they must somehow overcome a deadly, spine-chilling biological entity that they helped create.
It is two hundred years into the future and humanity is retreating from a dying Earth to colonize the solar system. Jamie Borgia is a geobiologist aboard the Mariner III, a research vessel which is on an exploratory mission to Mercury’s North Pole.
While searching for minerals and precious metals, her team finds something unexpected and extraordinary. But with growing horror they soon realize that what they have found is so potentially destructive that it eclipses all the dangers mankind has faced before.
The discovery sets a ruthless organization in pursuit. As Jamie, her husband, and their friends are chased from the moons of Saturn to the fierce pioneer settlements of the Kuiper Belt, they desperately try to uncover the truth behind what they found under the icy waters of Mercury and neutralize a scientific revelation that could reshape the human species.
Dan was still looking at the lines of data moving rapidly down the large screen.
“I’m going to double check the decontamination protocols for the hydrobot and anything else we’ve sent out there,” he said. “We don’t want something foreign slipping through the floor of the equipment bay into the machine shop or the cargo hold. It’d be a problem if something got loose on the ship. We’d never get the Mariner out of quarantine.”
A stillness settled over the room at Dan’s words.
One of the cheap white diodes embedded in the ceiling chose that moment to flicker spasmodically. The scintillating light made the folds underneath Ivan’s eyes seem to twitch up and down and turned Dan’s naturally pale complexion into the uneven greyness of a corpse.
Jamie shivered, rubbing the skin on her arms as goosebumps moved upwards; the hairs at the back of her neck prickled.
“Hey. You okay?”
Dan's words were faint, as if her ears were stuffed with cotton balls.
“I’m fine. It’s just the air recycler.”
Someone has just walked over my grave, she thought, the old Earth expression coming suddenly to mind.
The words and accompanying imagery of graveyards floated unbidden into her consciousness like a grey mist, abruptly dampening her jubilation.
September 2, 2025
"Alien (1979) and Slither (2006) have a baby. One day that baby is zipping around the solar system in her experimental spaceship and crashes into the Rocinante (Leviathan Wakes 2011,The Expanse 2015) and out pops Typhon’s Legacy.
I opened this book at about 7:30 one evening and when I looked up again, I was 150 some pages in and I should have gone to bed half an hour ago. So, I check to see if I saw the publisher information correctly and yep, self published. It must crash and burn later on. But no.
This is probably the most fun I have had with a book since Dungeon Crawler Carl (no, it is nothing like DCC other than being thoroughly entertaining). While the various bits and pieces are out there in popular books and movies, the author does an excellent job of putting things together in a way that adds a bit of freshness to the story. The one thing I don’t recall seeing anywhere else is the final step leading to the “birth” of the xenomorph. I figured that one out about two lines before the primary characters did, so good job.
Five stars all the way. If you like space opera and horror, definitely give this book a try."