Exiles by Mason Coile and Andrew Pyper
Exiles
by Mason Coile and Andrew Pyper
Science Fiction | Horror
224 Pages
Released September 2025
Rating: ★★★ 1/2
Goodreads
Content Warnings
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam (G.P. Putnam’s Sons) for a copy of this ARC! This story was fantastically creepy!
I’ve been keeping my eye out for my next favorite Sci-Fi book, and I had tentatively high hopes that Exiles would be it. A mix of space and horror piqued my interest and I was thrilled when the publisher approved my request. Unfortunately, there were a couple things holding this novel back from being amazing.
This book follows Dana Gold, a female astronaut on her way to Mars where she and a team of two other men are tasked with preparing the colony for the arrival of more people. Ahead of them, a small team of robots were already on Mars, busy setting up their livable habitat. But when communication with the robots suddenly goes dark, the crew is concerned. Even worse, when they land they find half of the habit destroyed, and one of the robots missing.
I’m going to start with the thing I didn’t like, and that was the characters. Strangely, all the human characters felt flat. This is tricky to explain because our main character, Dana, does have a backstory that is slowly revealed over the course of the novel but I didn’t feel any personality or identity shine through. I don’t know if it was the author’s intention but she felt more robotic in nature than the robots themselves. I found myself much more interested in the robots and their dialogue and mannerisms and struggled to find connection with the human characters of the book. Ultimately, I just wanted the characters to feel more real. Another small thing that bothered me because it pulled me out of the book slightly was the boss of the three astronauts - Blake. He seemed like a bit of a hot-head and I had a hard time believing that after months of trials and testing and personality assessments that that type of personality would have been picked to head a crew, regardless of his dedication to the mission.
Okay, enough of the bad! Let’s talk about the good. The atmosphere is great, the tension and worry was palpable throughout and I loved the way it was built up over the course of this novel. I love the horror aspects that were incorporated into this book too, it felt well-balanced and not over the top or gratuitous which I think would have caused some desensitization and taken away from the shock value of this story.
I really enjoyed the pacing of this book too, though I’m a bit back and forth on whether the book was too short. Part of me wonders if I’d have felt more connected to the characters if we had spent more time with them at the beginning of the book instead of being thrown right into the action? That said, because we were thrown right into the action, I was immediate gripped by the story and ended up reading the book rather quickly. I also loved the way this story unfolded, revealing more and more of Dana’s past as the book went on. Sometimes these types of stories can feel too long and drawn out but I think this one was done really well.
Finally, while I think the ending might be decisive, I love a good ambiguous ending and really liked how the author wrapped up the story.
Overall, I think this was a good book. I definitely feel there was room for improvement, particularly on character development but I loved the pacing, atmosphere and the horror parts were wonderfully shocking. Overall, I’d recommend this to anyone that enjoys a good sci-fi horror.
This book releases on September 16 2025.