Tattooed Bibliophiles | Moss'd in Space

Moss'd in Space

Rebecca Thorne

Save to Your Books

100% of affiliate revenue supports Tattooed Bibliophiles

USA Today Bestselling author Rebecca Thorne delights in a brand new cozy science-fiction series…for fans of Martha Wells! Features original inside art!

Torian Razner finally bought a starship, and contrary to Amelia’s assessment, it was not “a meteoric sign of stupidity.” Sure, the alien starship may have been abandoned for a century, and it may be covered in moss now… but it’s Torian’s ticket to freedom, regardless of what her ex… ah, captain… said.

Except Torian’s first flight reveals a surprise passenger: the moss is actually an organic computer with a snarky attitude and serious abandonment issues. The target of its loathing? The immortal alien who built it (and then parked the starship, with Moss inside, and forgot about it). The same alien who just found Torian and accused her of “stealing” the ship.

It’s entirely possible that Amelia was right about this meteoric stupidity.

Get the Bindery app

Posts about this title from Tattooed Bibliophiles

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Jun 5

\ \ OK listen, I can't keep up with this every week Tuesday releases shit, I missed all of May and I just realized it. I'm doing my best dahling, this is a hobby and nobody pays book influencers. And I don’t think you understand how long it takes to format these damn things with all the book pics, because I did it and copied it in here and lost it all, and that your attention span is already almost gone without a picture to distract your brain. I'm working on a really interesting article about the death of booktok, and I don’t want to suck more time away from that. You should watch out for it. (Hint hint)\ \ So I'm going to do a big slog into every month instead, tell you what's coming, give you a chance to get those preorders in and SUPPORT THOSE AUTHORS! So what's coming out this month? Well NOT Alecto the Ninth, my lamentatious lyctoral league.\ \ By genre:\ \ SPACE OPERA\ \ \ \ Recursion: Germinal Book 2 by Aric McBay (AK Press, indie) - June 9 – A pacifist society on a tiny green planet is invaded by Colonizers. I’ve had book 1 sitting on my shelf, because I cannot pass up fiction by AK Press, and I definitely need to pick up book 1 this week. It would be greeeeeeat if I could put down my phone and read a book. It’s summer and the kids need wifi free time too, so I guess I’ll be figuring out how to set up parental controls on the router this week, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay\ \ \ \ The Forgetting Navigations by Marlee Jane Ward (Interstellar Flight Press, indie) - June 9 – Our main character has eMoTiOnAl dAmAgE from being abandoned in a lifepod in space. A freight hauler rescues her and they bond over tea. Then the past comes a knocking, as it does in stories. This may be more of a litfic in space thing, but it’s honestly hard to tell without reading. I feel like Space Opera implies more action, but subgenres are not a science, so you will have to judge a book by it’s description.\ \ \ \ The Sixth Nik by Daniel Kraus (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press) - June 2 – In a bioship capable of reacting to a crew’s every need, a nine year old cultist with a brain enhancement investigates a planet infected with a plague. The crew also includes an assassin, an engineer who has been jigsawwed together with surgeries, an addict medic, and a “nonmodded” captain who doesn’t like the nine year old, this has all the makings of a found family space opera.\ \ POST-APOCALYPTIC\ \ \ \ Earth 7 by Deb Olin Unferth (Graywolf, and Indie Press) - June 9 – Kind of a romance between a woman raised in a pod in the ocean and a woman who may or may not be a robot. But also earth is now a charcoal briquette and everyone has gone to Mars except a handful of holdouts trying to construct a molecular collection of Earth stuff for people to eventually repopulate. And what the hell is a soul globule? You’ll have to read Earth 7 to find out.\ \ \ \ The Withers by Lee Upton (Regal House Publishing) - June 23 – I mean kinda dystopian but also kind of a thriller, this is a post epidemic book where scars from the disease are called withers. A woman is living with the surgeon who saved her and his preggo wife, in a world where organ traffickers roam the streets. They have to fight to protect the woman and her fetus, and they’re calling this a “Grimm’s fairytale” like story.\ \ SPECULATIVE / LITERARY SCI-FI\ \ \ \ Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim (Macmillan/Tor) - June 2 – Imagine you immigrate to a new country. But the rule is, you get cloned, and only the clone gets to go and you have to stay. You’re cut in two, and you can keep in touch with your other self or not. The MC of this book does not, until she’s called back to Korea for a funeral. She doesn’t know that her original self plans to switch places with her. Obviously, this is a deep dive into the psychological effects of immigration. Do you love the Doppelgängers trope?\ \ \ \ Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Macmillan/Tor) - June 2 – Genetically engineered animals do the work while humans relax in the sun. A racoon is hired to track down a very important mouse. Why is the mouse important? It has something everyone wants. A familiar story if told about humans, but I’m interested to see it told from animals perspective. I’ve never read an Adrian Tchaikovsky book, any of my scifi besties want to give me some opinions on whether I should?\ \ \ \ Our Sister's Keeper by Jasmine Holmes (Bindery/Mareas Books, indie) - June 9 – In a fantasy retelling of a 1920’s era all-Black free town, women known as “carriers” pull traumatic memories from men so that the town is populated with men free of their pain, while the remnants of the past haunt the women. In a world where we expect Black Women to save us all, this book is an exploration of what it’s like to live with that expectation.\ \ \ \ Voyagers by Meg Charlton (HarperCollins) - June 16 – a signal arrives from the edge of the solar system in a first contact story. While everyone on earth loses their collective shit, Alex’s old wounds are opened, because two decades ago, she and her friend Ana were abducted at age six. After which followed a media frenzy no child should endure, especially not after some trauma like that. Ana went on to be an advocate for the abducted while Alex tried to move on and forget. But now they are drawn back together in a story about friendship, family, and truth. \ \ \ \ A City Dreaming by Maurice Broaddus, Book 3 in the Astra Black series (Macmillan/Tor) - June 30 – This series follows a young political leader, a woman in an elite military unit, and a captain of a starship, who are all part of the Muungano empire, a coalition of city states that stretches from Old Earth to Titan, in their quest to form an empire free of endless wars and oppression. This Afrofuturist spec fic series deserves a lot more press than it gets. Come on Tor, do better in your promotion!!!\ \ \ \ The Moon Papers by Emmalea Russo (Arcade Publishing, Skyhorse) - June 30 – A controversial arts collective is going to launch a second moon from the Mojave Desert into Earth’s atmosphere in a project they are calling Moon 2. I am deeply concerned, but the book is coined as raucous, psychedelic, and humorous, which I am translating as publisher speak for, they think it’s funny as shit. But the description isn’t, so someone isn’t doing marketing properly. IDK, I need a preview to see if it’s any good.\ \ \ \ The Young Die Old by Nguyễn Bình Phương with Khải Q. Nguyễn (translator) (Major Books, indie) - June 30 – This may be more of a fantasy, but in my searches for sci-fi it keeps popping up so the author must have filed it this way somewhere. Two feuding families fight for control of a buried treasure, but there reality blurs with hallucination, as spirits, doppelgängers, and collective guilt haunt the living. A society grapples with the aftershocks of war, repression, and silence, with a generation of children who age prematurely under the weight of unspoken histories. You won't find this one on Amazon, and hells yeah, fuck Bezos! You can find it here.\ \ TIME TRAVEL\ \ \ \ The Traveler by Joseph Eckert (Macmillan/Tor) - June 2 – at 7:51am, Scott Treder slips forward through time 24 hours. And every day, he slips again, losing double the amount of time each time slip. And while everyone ages normally, he doesn’t. His son ages beyond him. Years pass by in his marriage. It’s giving Click with Adam Sandler. I wonder how different it will be. Yall, this cover sucks. Nobody is going to buy this book based on this cover, what are you doing Tor???\ \ \ \ Retro by Jessica M. Goldstein (Penguin Random House/Ballantine) - June 23 – An out of work actress takes a job as a time travel tour guide at a company called Retro, taking wealthy tourists on vacations to historical hot spots. She loves it, thrilling in the romance of an office crush and a 1937 private eye pursuing her. But slowly she notices some strange things happening to her memory and her relationships outside of Retro, and escaping into the past was never really an escape at all. I am wildly interested to see if this speaks to the escapism we justify with Netflix and doom scrolling and romance reading in the present.\ \ ROMANCE\ \ \ \ Moss'd in Space by Rebecca Thorne (Macmillan/Bramble) - June 30 – from the author of A Pirate’s Life for Tea comes this cozy sci-fi romance about a starship captain who purchases a ship covered in Moss with an organic computer inside with a snarky attitude who loathes it’s builder because the immortal alien abandoned it. NGL, snarky AI’s in ships used to be my jam, but the way I’ve been feeling about real AI may change my enjoyment of them.\ \ \ \ Plastic, Prism, Void by Violet Allen (LittlePuss Press, indie) – May 19 (shut your mouth, I missed this one and it deserves attention. It's pride month and this cover deserves praise alone, and that's before I've touched the book! Sue me. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.) Trans enemies to lovers in which a magical girl-gone-bad and a renegade mech pilot must find a way to stay on a date forever...even if it means destroying the world.\ \ THRILLER\ \ \ \ The Other by Annie Neugebauer (Shortwave Publishing, indie) - June 9 – this is a Book 2 Outsiders Sequence, which is a novella series. I’ve never read a novella series but I think I could get into that! Ten people head out on a backpacking trip, but the first night eleven set up camp. Everyone remembers everyone else. Who is the extra? That’s the premise of the first book. This one is about a couple on an outdoor retreat who meet their doppelgangers.\ \ \ \ Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer (Macmillan/Tordotcom) - June 2 – An out of work OBGYN who has gotten publicly crucified for offering abortion care is kidnapped by a cult to help birth their babies. And she gets kidnapped on page friggin 10. If you’ve been in a slump this one’s for you, I read it in a single sitting, and I have 3 kids at home for the summer while I’m trying to run a business. I generally don’t DO that. Crazy, seat of your pants, worth a read.\ \ \ \ Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay (HarperCollins/Morrow) - June 2 – So this semi professional gamer gets a nepotism job piloting a man in a vegetative state across the country, Weekend at Bernie’s style. He has an AI implant in his head and she can control his body using a cell phone. But he’s not dead. He’s living this grotesque hellscape where he doesn’t remember who he is or why there’s a rabbit tattoo on his arm. Their stories intertwine and they end up fugitives. Noooo, I didn’t give the plot twist away – it was right there in the book description!\ \ ANTHOLOGY\ \ \ \ Ring Shout on Saturn by Sheree Renée Thomas (Third Man Books, indie) - June 9 – Afrofuturist short stories that range from a prophet building a starship (very Noah’s Arc) to alien sisters navigating human complexities. And that cover? That’s an AMAZING cover and I’m here for it. This is actually book2 of the three book The Root and Sky series, but they're all short stories so there's no reason you can't go ahead and preorder this one, read it, then get the rest!\ \ \ \ And an honorable mention to Lovecraft: Selected Stories, one of the Chiltern Classics being released on June 9. If you want to know more about my obsession with this set, read this. Or don't. Sometimes I'm convinced I'm living in a silo and nobody is reading any of this anyway. Either way, it's good practice writing, no?\ \ See you next week. Because I'm still writing blogs, they just won't all be book lists of upcoming stuff. I need creative time as well as research time to feed my soul AND brain! (But not AI. Never that.)\ \ — Zee\ \

- *\ \ If you liked this and want more of whatever THIS is (unhinged book analysis, barely contained rage at the state of the world, and occasional Tamsyn Muir references and em dashes that I will never apologize for) consider subscribing for $5/month. Every cent goes to people who actually need it, because I have a day job and a cause, not a brand deal. This is my middle finger to Big 5 publishing, dressed up as a book blog. Come hold it up with me.](https://tattooedbibliophile.binderybooks.com/item/Qz2POvbnW0wbEMBxdWvR/)

6/3/26 - New Sci-fi Titles This Month

19 books

Posts about this book from across Bindery

Casey the Reader\ \ Casey\ \ • Jul 3

Join for free

[Now that I'm doing weekly reading roundups on Mondays, it doesn't really make sense to do a fave of the week on Fridays. I don't know exactly what I'm gonna do yet (I KNOW it doesn't have to be the same every week. But my brain does not! It likes routines!), but today I've got my June wrap up and a look forward at some books I hope to pick up in July. (Books marked with a * were gifted to me and books marked with a ^ I was paid to read.)\ \ For June reads, it's no surprise that all my faves (starred) were books I read for Pride Reading Bingo. Queer books forever!\ \ \ \ THE QUARTER QUEEN^\ \ WHY ARE PEOPLE INTO THAT?\ \ LONDON FALLING*\ \ ⭐️ SEVEN DEVILS\ \ ESCALA'S WISH^\ \ ⭐️ THE MAIDENHEADS*\ \ DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL (reread)\ \ ⭐️ SEASONS OF GLASS AND IRON*\ \ DIVERGENT (reread)\ \ POOL HOUSE*\ \ LOVE IS AN EX-COUNTRY\ \ RAISING ARTEMIS^\ \ THE FOREST ON THE EDGE OF TIME*\ \ ⭐ ONE OF THE BOYS*\ \ DEATH OF THE AUTHOR*\ \ ⭐ SHAPES OF LOVE*\ \

- *\ \ Here's what's on deck for July. (Ish...you know how that mood reading life goes.)\ \ \ \ MOSS'D IN SPACE* - This is the July Found Family Book Club pick!\ \ CHAOS* - This space romance series is a fave of mine and I've been saving this latest installment for when I needed a treat.\ \ MAKE ME BETTER* - Gailey is a fave author and normally I would have gobbled this up by now but for some reason I thought it was a fall release and therefore I didn't prioritize the ARC. Whoops!\ \ BLACK SALT QUEEN* - I've been meaning to read this fantasy about royalty, romance, and betrayal for awhile and the sequel recently came out so I better get to it!\ \ I LOVE YOU DON'T DIE* - I'd intended to read this for Pride Bingo and didn't get there. I adored Song's debut CHLORINE and am looking forward to more of that.\ \ THIS PRINCESS KILLS MONSTERS* - Another Pride Bingo fail. I've been very into cozy, comedic fantasy lately so I'm ready to wrap myself up in this one.\ \ OUT OF STEP, INTO YOU* - The last of my Pride Bingo intendeds. I thought Burch's debut YA novel a few years ago was seriously underrated, so watch out for me yelling about this one soon.\ \ Books I'm carrying over from June: My current reads are Love In A F-cked Up World by Dean Spade and Coldwire* by Chloe Gong.\ \ Other miscellaneous July reads: I run an in-person book club that reads spicy books and I our July pick is The Pairing by Casey McQuiston, which will be a reread for me. I also read the first chapter of Murder In The Dressing Room* by Holly Star yesterday. There will be other audiobooks because I can't commute without them, but I haven't picked any yet.\ \ Is that a packed enough TBR for you or what!\ \ Join for free or login](https://caseythereader.binderybooks.com/item/RjgobKuiwId4ySBsPVwi/)

June Wrap Up + July Hopefuls

26 books

Casey the Reader\ \ Casey\ \ • Jul 2

Join for free

JULY FOUND FAMILY BOOK CLUB PICK

JULY FOUND FAMILY BOOK CLUB PICK Hi friends! July’s pick for Found Family Book Club is a shiny new release - MOSS’D IN SPACE by Rebecca Thorne.

How do you join FFBC? Visit my 🔗 to my Bindery Books page. When you subscribe there, you gain access to my Discord server, which is where the book club discussion happens on the last Monday of every month. I hope you’ll join us!

About the book:

“Former smuggler Torian Razner finally bought a starship, and contrary to Amelia’s assessment, it was not “a meteoric sign of stupidity.” Sure, the alien starship may have been abandoned for a century, and it may be covered in moss now… but it’s Torian’s ticket to freedom, regardless of what her ex… ah, captain… said.

[ ID: Photo - Casey, a white woman with short brown hair and glasses, stands in front of a white bookshelf holding her hand up. Pasted above her hand is a graphic of the cover of Moss’d In Space. ]

1 book

Judging By The Cover\ \ judgingby_thecover\ \ • Jun 28

Join for free

[Welcome back to After the Walk, where Link and I return from our Sunday morning stroll, and I attempt to organize my thoughts about everything I've been reading.\ \ This week ended up being one of those wonderfully unexpected reading weeks where every genre somehow arrived at the same destination.\ \ I spent time with Egyptian gods, mushroom-ravaged forests, sentient moss, hockey players pretending to date, women haunted by the past, and a serial killer trying very hard not to become one again.\ \ On paper, these stories couldn't be more different.\ \ But underneath every one of them was the same question: What does it actually mean to be human?\ \ 👑 Isis of Egypt \ \ I've read plenty of mythology retellings over the past few years, but almost all of them have one thing in common: They're Greek.\ \ That's what made Isis of Egypt feel so refreshing.\ \ Malayna Evans introduces readers to an entirely different pantheon while making the gods feel surprisingly relatable. The divine politics, fractured relationships, jealousy, grief, and ambition all mirror very human emotions.\ \ What I appreciated most (especially after speaking with Malayna during our Instagram Live) is how intentionally Isis is portrayed. She's powerful because she continually chooses empathy. In many mythology retellings, strength is measured by conquest. Here, strength is measured by compassion. That's a much more interesting story to tell.\ \ The historical research is evident throughout the novel, but it never feels like you're reading a history lesson. Evans trusts readers to absorb the mythology naturally through the narrative, making the world feel immersive instead of overwhelming.\ \ Read if you enjoy:\ \

Mythology beyond Greece\ \
Historical fiction grounded in real research\ \
Strong female protagonists\ \
Political and family drama\ \ \ 🍄 Eden \ \ Every once in a while I read a horror novel that reminds me horror exists to make us care.\ \ Eden absolutely terrified me.\ \ The fungal-infected wildlife is vividly grotesque, and several scenes genuinely made my skin crawl.\ \ But that's not why I'll remember this book; I'll remember the people.\ \ Kylo Kirby understands one of horror's biggest secrets: monsters only matter if readers desperately want the characters to survive them.\ \ I became deeply attached to this cast, which meant every dangerous encounter carried emotional weight.\ \ The prose also deserves special recognition. The novel constantly balances beauty with decay. One paragraph paints breathtaking images of sunlight filtering through abandoned landscapes; the next forces readers to confront horrifying mutations created by the fungal outbreak.\ \ That tension between beauty and horror perfectly mirrors the novel itself.\ \ I also loved the inclusion of scientific papers, transcripts, and other mixed-media elements. Rather than interrupting the story, they quietly expand the world and allow readers to piece together humanity's downfall alongside the characters.\ \ For a debut, this is remarkably confident.\ \ 🌿 Moss'd in Space \ \ I need everyone to understand something: I became emotionally attached to moss.\ \ Not metaphorical moss; actual sentient moss.\ \ If that's not enough to convince you to read this book, I'm honestly not sure what else I can say.\ \ Moss'd in Space reminded me why I love cozy science fiction so much.\ \ This novel succeeds because every member of its found family feels distinct, lovable, and wonderfully imperfect.\ \ Moss itself may be the emotional center of the story. After spending more than a century abandoned aboard a forgotten ship, its deepest desire is belonging. Isn't that what found family stories have always been about?\ \ The humor is delightful, the romance is charming, and despite its cozy atmosphere, the novel never forgets to create genuine tension when it matters.\ \ I cannot wait to reunite with this crew.\ \ 🏒 Big Stick Energy \ \ Fake dating has become one of romance's most recognizable tropes.\ \ The problem is that many novels stop at the trope itself, but Big Stick Energy doesn't.\ \ Both Eric and Darcy carry different kinds of loss: One mourns someone who is gone forever; the other mourns relationships that still exist but have fundamentally changed.\ \ Those quieter emotional threads elevate the romance because the characters don't simply fall in love.\ \ They become witnesses to each other's pain.\ \ The humor also lands beautifully. Darcy's inability to stand up to her family contrasted with her absolute willingness to mouth off to her boss created some of my favorite moments in the book. Sometimes romance doesn't need to reinvent the genre; sometimes it just needs to execute familiar tropes exceptionally well.\ \ This does exactly that.\ \ 🌲 Heather \ \ The marketing calls this a thriller, but I'd argue literary suspense is a much more accurate description.\ \ The disappearance of two sisters may launch the story, but the mystery is simply the thread connecting a much larger exploration of motherhood, sisterhood, trauma, identity, memory, and forgiveness.\ \ This is a novel that unfolds patiently.\ \ It trusts readers. It doesn't rush emotional moments for the sake of faster pacing or bigger twists.\ \ The audiobook deserves special recognition as well.\ \ Three narrators guide readers through multiple timelines with remarkable clarity, and Bailey Carr's portrayal of Annabelle adds heartbreaking vulnerability to an already emotionally rich story.\ \ Some books ask, "Who committed the crime?" Heather asks something far more difficult: "Can we ever truly know another person's life?"\ \ That's the mystery that lingered with me.\ \ 🖤 Songbird in the Gallows \ \ This was probably my most mixed read of the week, mainly because I wanted even more from what was already there.\ \ The setting completely captivated me.\ \ Grimlock feels like somewhere between a gothic fairy tale and a dark romance novel. Every page suggested secrets waiting beneath the surface, and I found myself wishing the story leaned even further into that eerie atmosphere.\ \ Blue was easily my favorite part of the novel. Morally gray without losing his humanity, protective without becoming overbearing, he anchored the story whenever he appeared.\ \ Saylor didn't resonate with me quite as strongly, though the supporting cast added warmth and humor that kept the story engaging throughout.\ \ Final Thoughts \ \ When I finished this week's stack, I realized every one of these books was wrestling with the same question: Who chooses compassion when life gives them every reason not to?\ \
A goddess.\ \
A survivor.\ \
A lonely piece of moss.\ \
A hockey player.\ \
A police chief.\ \
Even a former killer.\ \ \ This week's books reminded me that no matter the genre, the books I remember most are never really about the plot. They're about people. Or, occasionally...Moss.](https://judgingbythecover.binderybooks.com/item/RIRpiiNtyMTqxynR2TC5/)