Freedom awaits, but the Consortium is watching.

When rogue drones threaten citizens and the ship’s crew falls ill, the Recorder answers their call for help, once again drawing scrutiny from the Consortium.

With no other option and under an Elder’s overbearing watch, she returns to Pallas Station where she nearly lost her life in the hope of finding something—anything—to save her friends and countless others. Her friends are determined to keep her safe, but for the Recorder, saving others comes first, no matter the cost.

Book 2 of the Children of the Consortium series.

She is no longer a Recorder but is still nameless—an aberration the Consortium never allows. She finds reprieve in new battles against two infestations—first, a plague, and second, gigantic cockroaches. In Aberration, Cathy McCrumb resumes the story of Recorder, dealing in solid sci-fi themes with notes of a manipulative Big Brother. Her compelling style with a keen sense of humanity invigorates this story in which even villains gain their measure of love and loss. Self-sacrifice and nods toward faith add hints of light. Some readers may feel a little confusion from introductions to new characters who are then shuffled offstage, yet Aberration brightly weaves together science fiction, color, and heart.

Best for: Fans of science fiction.

Discern: Some violence, medical treatment withheld from someone who later dies, implications that children and other “unfit” people are killed and their organs harvested, an extended post-epidemic sequence with moving corpses, characters show callousness to suffering and death, descriptions of disease and giant insects.