Sequel to Station Eternity, part of the ongoing Midsolar Murders series of science fiction mysteries. Once again Mallory Viridian is dealing with a murder, suspicion, and life threatening chaos on the space station she calls home. Although she learned the secret behind her murder mojo at the end of the last book, this one sees her back to square one and as confused as ever. Plotwise I understand that a mystery protagonist can't have powers that are too impressive or there's no mystery but it was a bit disappointing how little she was able to explore them. She also spends much of the book confused and not even really herself, with a variety of external forces pinballing her around. Our alien rock friends from the first book continued to be ridiculous in the best ways and were easily my favorite part. An enjoyable read!

Mallory is back! I liked this installment heaps more than I enjoyed the first one. Don't get me wrong, I did like the first one (or else I probably wouldn't be writing this right now) but I found myself wishing for a bit more from it. This one delivered where the other one fell a bit flat for me--the mystery felt more tightly plotted, the world got more description, and Mallory got some much needed character development. With Mallory in charge of a space station where murder is afoot, what could possibly go wrong? (Everything)

My thanks to NetGalley for making an eARC of this book available to me.

First off, another great cover.

Mallory is back, along with most all of the supporting characters from the previous book, plus a few new ones. These include a couple of childhood friends, one of whom she seems to have forgotten about. Ah, another mystery to solve!

As in the previous book, lots of interesting aliens, some not-so-nice and duplicitous humans, and a few friends to help resolve the mysteries posed in this book. Yes, we have a murder (well deserved, of course), and we have infrastructure problems and communication problems. Mallory has been put nominally in charge of the space station while the station keeper, Mrs. Brown, is off learning how to better deal with intelligent space stations. How could anything possibly go wrong?

This is the second of the Midsolar Murders. The first, Station Eternity, introduced critical plotlines, so you’d better read it first. I enjoyed this second installment; Lafferty’s writing is fun – this comes out in the crazy dramas with aliens aboard the sentient space station Eternity and the voices she gives them. I hate to draw comparisons if it makes people less interested in reading, but I have to say Lafferty could write Marvel scripts, specifically for films starring plant-based lifeforms and aggressive talking rodents.

This story begins with Mallory, the Earthwoman who left Earth to escape from the murders that she uncannily seemed to attract, and Mrs. Brown, the Earthwoman who replaced the former “host” (lots of symbiotic relationships in this series) of station Eternity, meeting outside the scope of the Sundry, hive-minded, wasp-like aliens who have an interesting and complicated connection to Mallory. Mrs. Brown is leaving Eternity aboard her daughter, the spaceship Infinity, to learn more about her role as Eternity’s host. Mallory is tasked with taking care of things while Mrs. Brown is gone, which is a huge ask, considering the chaos that ensued when Eternity’s former host was found murdered.

To complicate things, another shuttle will be arriving from Earth, and Mallory’s job will be to welcome them and act in Mrs. Brown’s stead if anything arises. And Mallory isn’t feeling too well… chills, fever, headache. And the Sundry are acting strange: the silver faction seems to be working with the blue faction of alien wasps instead of fighting with it, as usual.

Next we get reacquainted with Xan Morgan, the 3rd Earth emigré who stowed away aboard Eternity in the first book to avoid arrest. He is Infinity’s host, so as you can imagine, it’s a wrench to let Mrs. Brown leave without him, and he’s spending a lot of time with Ferd (Ferdinand), his Gneiss bartender friend. Gneiss are giant, rock aliens that can take infinite forms as they mature – Ferdinand is a hominid shape, as is princess Tina, although Tina’s form has rocket thrusters!, and their friend Stephanie transformed herself into a spaceship. Gneiss communicate through vibrations, and can do so across the entire space station. The bar is the only place aboard Eternity where Xan and Mallory can get food that doesn’t kill or poison them, even if the drinks resemble lava more than hot coffee.

Xan is looking for some comradeship to get his mind off Infinity, but Ferd is dealing with his own problems: Tina and Stephanie both rocked the Gneiss world by evolving quickly - something that their progenitors don’t countenance because in order to do so, a Gneiss absorbs the life energy of another lifeform, and in both Tina and Stephanie’s cases, the lifeforms they absorbed to transform were recent murder victims…so they’re laying low to avoid a second round of punishment from their mother planet Bromide after the first one ended in gunfire and explosions. Tina hopes to get to the prison planet Bezoar, where she can get support from her subjects.

Mallory has made her way home to rest, and to meet with our final human, the failed Eternity host Adrian, also a failed Earth ambassador, and Mallory considers him a failed human. When he tried to join with Eternity, he was blinded and chaos ensued; the near-death experience mellowed him out a very, teensy little bit. Thanks to some visual tech from Phantasmagore friend Devanshi, Adrian can see with the help of a little drone that follows him around. He notices that she looks bad, but insists Mallory co-host a reception for the humans on the incoming shuttle.

The next thing Mallory knows, she is waking up three days later in the medbay. While she was out of commission, station Eternity became less and less responsive. In the delirium of her fever, Mallory sees a vision of her high school friend Amy Valor shielded by a boy who both attracts and repulses Mallory. When she wakes, she finds the Earth shuttle has already arrived, she’s had some visitors – apparently there are people she knows on the shuttle– and it’s the day of the reception! While Mallory was out, comms went out, as well as other critical ship systems. Tina is stomping around trying to help, but everything is cuckoo.

Surprisingly, Mallory feels none of the dread of murder(s) that normally accompanies her attendance at a gathering. At the party, she meets the new Earth ambassador, former WNBA star Jessica Brass as well as a threesome Mallory knew on Earth: Dr. Amy Valor, her best friend from high school on Eternity studying quantum physics with a scientific contingent from the University of North Carolina sent to study extraterrestrial life; Amy’s twin brother Parker, self-proclaimed bug guy, also with the UNC crew; and North Carolina SBI agent Donald Draughn, the man who made Mallory’s last years on Earth a living hell, ruining her chances to work in law enforcement as a detective.

After meeting the latter three, Mallory bolts, experiencing bizarre, severe anxiety. She looks for information from the Silver Sundry at their hive in the shuttle bay, but instead of getting information, she finds dead silver bodies around their hive and no response. She heads up to the park where the Blue Sundry have their nest and asks them for information, but only hears buzzing. She makes her way back to the party, where she meets Oscar Daye, basketball coach and celebrity gossip website owner, and apparent sleazeball.

The anxious feelings are too much for Mallory, so she leaves Xan to take her place at the reception, where he meets Oscar, Reggie and Dr. Max Valor-Cole, all three part of the UNC group but linked to Amy and Parker as well–Reggie is their older brother. Reggie is a lawyer working for Oscar. He studies how the US has changed their laws since first contact. Max is an experimental psychologist studying the effects of aliens on human behavior. The couple seem to be experiencing a little friction…

As Xan reviews the tableau at the reception, he understands a little bit about how Mallory must feel when all the pieces show connections. It’s at this moment that Jessica Brass asks Xan to walk her back to her room.
Meanwhile, Mallory is resting and thinking about the Earth visitors. There are too many people she knows gathered together. She can’t believe she didn’t remember Parker! She had such a huge crush on him in high school, but Amy wouldn’t let her get close. And Draughn? Why? Suddenly, Sundry fly through the vents and give her a distressed message about unknown chaos and confusion. Instead of jumping up to investigate, she surrenders to sleep and has anxious dreams, but wakes up to a pounding on her door. It’s agent Draughn, and he’s covered in blood.

Like I said before, Lafferty seems to have a good time writing. As with lots of murder mystery plots, the reader is faced with a lot of characters and potential motives. I like the way Mallory is taken out of commission – her normal senses are disrupted and the rest of the novel requires her to put all the stories together to tease out what really happened. It doesn’t hurt that she gets help from Xan and the rest of her friends.

My critique is that the plot is heavily conversational; for me, this has the unfortunate effect of the characters running together, but also makes for great sequence and plot progression. Because of this, the plot seems rushed (just my opinion!). If you like your science fiction murder mysteries action-packed, this is a book for you.

I look forward to the next Midsolar Murder in the series – I see some things in this one that I’m very interested in finding more about.

Thank you, NetGalley, ACE, Berkly and Penguin Random House for sending this book for review. Any opinions are my own; I’m not receiving any kind of douceur for my review.

An engaging science fiction mystery. Another human shuttle is coming to Eternity Station, bringing the new ambassador. Eternity is sentient, controlled by a hive-mind of intelligent wasps and a sole human symbiont. Numerous other alien species live aboard, with a handful of humans on sufferance. When systems start to break down while Mrs. Brown is off the station, it falls to murder magnet Mallory to hold things together. Especially once there is a murder during the welcoming party for the new human ambassador. Everything becomes chaotic and cuckoo from there.

Recommended.

Lafferty again threads a difficult needle in this sophomore entry into the Midsolar Murder series. As ever, Mallory finds herself embroiled in a murder when surrounded by more than a handful of humans. This time, victims and suspects have links to her past, some of which she remembers and some of them, troublingly, she has no memory of. The sci fi and the mystery parts are again carefully balanced against each other, and the plotting is such that the mystery and the scientific aspects cannot exist without the other. The reader best served by this series is an ecumenical genre lover, and I count myself among them. The gneiss are again a highlight of the characters, with Tina stealing every scene she's in. There are so many interesting places this series could go, and I look forward to the surprises we will have in store.

Book two of The Midsolar Murders series is just as fun as the first. Another shipload of humans is set to arrive at the station, yet Mallory is strangely unfazed by the prospect. Even when she realizes the passengers include her best friend from high school, her best friend’s twin brother who Mallory had a major crush on, and her nemesis Don the detective- Mallory just wants to go lie down. Her friends Xan, Steph, Ferd and Tina are concerned but Eternity is on the fritz; Mrs B has taken Infinity on a jaunt and of course the murders have started so there is a lot going on. What a great series- can’t wait for book three!
Thanks Netgalley for the ARC- my opinions are my own.

I adore Mur Lafferty. Chaos Terminal read like a cozy murder mystery set on a living space station. There are lots of great alien life forms. The main character Mallory thinks she's a "murder magnet" hence why she's living alone and away from humans. She's also gotten crazy good at solving the murders that happen all around her.

Murder-magnet Mallory is back, but things are all feeling a little wonky aboard Eternity. The station's host is leaving temporarily, a passel of new Earth visitors is arriving, and newly ascended f-ing metal battle mech Tina has become a queen. With plenty twists and turns and surprises, the Midsolar Mystery series continues and I loved it whole-heartedly and can't wait for more! Only 4 stars for a slow start, but I can forgive that for the rocking finale.

Thanks for the opportunity to read this advance copy, this honest review will be posted closer to publication.