Then when I saw it was only 273 pages I knew I was in for quite the ride. When I read that this was lost ships in space that are rumoured to return and full of horrors I was fully on board. This review is my thoughts and does not reflect the views of my team mates. But perhaps with the aid of Clarissa’s intelligence – and an armoured spacesuit – Opal may stand a chance.

She’s just one woman, entering an alien and lethal environment. Legends say the ships harbour death, but there’s no time for indecision. The Lost Ship is falling into the gravity well of a neutron star, and will soon be truly lost … forever. Together they have tracked down a Lost Ship, in a lonely nebula far from colonised space. Opal has stolen Clarissa, an experimental AI-controlled spaceship, from the military.

And she thinks it might be on a Lost Ship. She’s been seeking something her whole life. But sometimes they come back, strangely altered, derelict, and rumoured to be full of horrors. Sometimes spaceships disappear with everyone on board – the Lost Ships. Ideal for fans of sentient AI ships (such as Brandon Sanderson’s Skyward books), while the creepy, derelict Lost Ships evoke Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Diving series.Lost Solace is a semi-finalist in SPSFC and was assigned to FanFiAddict in the semi-finals. Lost Solace was a semifinalist in the international SPSFC science fiction competition in 2022.

Lost Solace by Karl Drinkwater