Hell's Heart, Alexis Hall

They are monsters. They are legends. And they are our prey. Earth is dead.

Which leaves us stuck living in atmospheric domes on planets that will kill us if we blink wrong, or run out of fuel. And by ‘fuel’ I mean cerebrospinal fluid, harvested at great risk from gargantuan space monsters. I joined the hunt hoping to get paid and maybe laid, but mostly paid.

And I followed a charismatic captain eager to face these beasts and to howl her defiance across the skies of Jupiter. On her crew, I met Q, a woman from the wreck of old Earth, who might have kept me grounded. Or then again, perhaps not.

We were ordered to hunt the greatest leviathan of all, and we fought beasts and ships and one another. Then we finally met our nemesis, there above the red heart of that world. Spoiler: it didn’t end well.