Voyagers of the Vacant Cosmos

Short verdict up front, this scratches my deep-space itch and earns a spot on my shelf.

• Razor-edged salvage sequences
• Weird, memorable ecology of the Hollows
• One Observatory subplot felt rushed

Even with that quibble, the propulsion of the story and the tenderness under the hull make it a standout.

This is a study in identity: what remains when your callsign overwrites your name? Kepler's calculus weighs community against survival, and the narrative keeps asking whether adaptation costs your soul or reveals it, circling the possibility of "the tear that might unthread the Vacant" without tipping into nihilism.

Worldbuilding here is a feast of cold stars and rust: the derelict ringworld Valen Spiral, the hustling corridors of Lagrange Freeport Cobalt-3, the perilous slide beyond the Orpheon Gate toward the Gossamer Reach. Salvage guilds, corporate privateers, and rival houses form a believable economy of favors and force, while the Hollows feel like true vacuum life, not just another enemy fleet. Navigation jargon, wayfinding contracts, and beacon etiquette ground the spectacle without smothering it. Every locale carries history, and every burn leaves a trace that someone is watching.

I am buzzing. This book fires retro-thrusters straight into the gut and then lets you drift, weightless, with Kepler as the Hollows shadow him and every contract grows teeth.

What got me is how Cassian's new callsign becomes a skin he tries on, then bleeds through. His voice warps in tiny ways, his choices sharpen, and the people around him feel that heat. Miri's recruitment isn't just a plot turn; it is a test of the friendship that kept him alive in the sump levels.

HARK-7 absolutely stole scenes for me with its stubborn protocols and unexpected heart. Watching it collide with a classified program had me clenching the armrest, because the book never forgets that "help" in this sector has a price tag.

I believed in Kepler, even when he barely believed in himself.

By the time the Harrowlight hums louder in his marrow, I was shouting yes, protect Cobalt-3, protect the drifting townships, protect the tiny pockets of kindness holding the Kessler Cradle together. The stakes feel intimate and cosmic in the same breath. Beautiful, brutal, radiant.

Fitzroy's line-level prose crackles with metallic tang and vacuum hush. The opening sprints, then eases into quieter wayfinding logs that let the tension reoxygenate. Close third stays welded to Cassian's new callsign without losing the human underneath, and the diction cleverly shifts as he moves from sump slang to Observatory jargon. A few transitions between job briefs and action beats feel abrupt, as if a page fell out of the flight binder. Even so, motifs recur with intention, and the chapter breaks land on images rather than gimmicks.

Kepler threads the dead lanes with a hunted spark, chased by Hollows and worse. Tight missions, sharp orbital stakes, and a finale that hums long after docking.