How It Unfolds (The Far Reaches, #1) by James S.A. Corey ****
Void (The Far Reaches, #2) by Veronica Roth ****
Falling Bodies (The Far Reaches, #3) by Rebecca Roanhorse **
The Long Game (The Far Reaches, #4) by Ann Leckie ***
Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach (The Far Reaches, #5) Nnedi Okorafor ****
Slow Time Between the Stars (The Far Reaches, #6) by John Scalzi *****
Best for: 18 and up

ScyFy Fan? I found a must read for you. AND IT’S FREE!

Head to Amazon and look up The Far Reaches Collection. It’s a series of bite-sized ScyFy stories written by some great authors! If you can forgive Veronica Roth for Divergent, that is.

The best part? Both the Kindle eBooks and the Audible audiobooks are FREE for Amazon Prime Members, and only $.99 otherwise!

All six stories examine the ideas and implications of deep space travel. Time dilation. Aliens. Isolation. Artificial intelligence. All the stuff that makes deep space travel stories cool is there, and I found reading them great fun. The shortest is 28 pages and the longest is 50, all together 227 pages. The perfect size for snacking!

How It Unfolds (The Far Reaches, #1) by James S.A. Corey ****
In this future, we’ve figure out how to scan and replicate our brains, then send our brain copies and the ingredients to make new bodies into deep space. When the “packet” arrives decades…centuries…eons later, an exact replica of us wakes up. That new group of us sets up to colonize a planet and sends out another “packet” further into space. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Fast forward A LONG TIME, and what happens? Read to find out!

Oh ya, and each iteration of us wakes up with the same memories of the original us…so how many chances would you have to right a wrong, or impress the girl? So many things could go right! So many things could go wrong…

Void (The Far Reaches, #2) by Veronica Roth ****
Consider this: you work on the staff of an intergalactic luxury cruise ship. Time says constant for you, but when you drop people off at different planets or space stations on the way, they get off and start aging at a different rate. So next time they get your ship, it might have been a year for you—but fifty for them! That’s the set up for a cool closed door murder mystery, which I love. Set in this scenario, this mystery was unique and a lot of fun!

Falling Bodies (The Far Reaches, #3) by Rebecca Roanhorse **
This one, I didn’t enjoy. The son of a powerful Senator has a tainted past but gets to try for a fresh start at a deep space college. New face, anonymity, daddy’s money can fix everything. He’s on probation and just needs to stay out of trouble—but then he meets a cute girl…

Oh ya–and his “dad” is a high-ranking member of the alien species who conquered humanity and “adopted” the MC as a social experiment as a baby. “See, your alien conquers aren’t so bad!” So…it’s not like he has any emotional baggage or challenges socializing with regular humans or anything.

The story was fine. The ending was terrible.

The Long Game (The Far Reaches, #4) by Ann Leckie ***
We spend a lot of our imagination thinking about what it might be like for humans when we move onto a different planet. But what might it be like for that planet’s native population? The Long Game was an interesting tale that explored time from the perspective of an alien with a lifespan quite a bit shorter than ours. It was interesting, but a bit boring.

Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach (The Far Reaches, #5) Nnedi Okorafor ****
What does it mean to be alone? Seven people are selected for the ultimate space science experiment: A decade of total isolation while traveling through space in exchange for a lifetime of wealth. Would you do it? This is the set up for Just out of Jupiter’s Reach. The seven travelers are allowed a one-week meet-up in Jupiter’s orbit five years into their ten-year mission. It’s going to be an eventful week! I thought this one was super creative.

Slow Time Between the Stars (The Far Reaches, #6) by John Scalzi *
Ah, John Scalzi. No one is doing ScyFy better than him today. It didn’t surprise me that I liked his entry into The Far Reaches Collection the best. We build an AI to travel the stars for us. Mission: Simple. Go see what’s out there, see if you can find us a new home, and send back what you learn. But…it’s an AI. Who says an AI has to follow its programming?

That makes it should a bit more ominous than it is, I guess. It’s not scary or intense. But it is a fascinating look at the implications of human potential, what AI means, and space travel that covers trillions of miles and tens of thousands of years. John Scalzi strikes again.

There’s no explicit content across the collection, but there is some grown up language. I’ll recommend the stories as best for 18 and up.

Happy Reading!