Advanced Reader Review – Nether Vortex is out 10/27/2026 – Mild Spoilers Below
I tend to appreciate when the end of one book in a series lends itself to a very different sequel. And when the sequel can actually make that jump without falling back to the original story’s trappings, all the better. When Kevin J. Anderson left the crew of the Neil Armstrong at the end of 2024’s Nether Station, that story’s “haunted house in space” setup was already finished with. In the final pages, the stage is set for intergalactic war against a Lovecraftian enemy to take its place. Nether Vortex flies right into that new frontier and, for the most part, delivers on that escalation.
Although the scale is much grander this time around, Anderson’s character writing feels stronger. Cammie Skoura, the series’ primary POV protagonist, sometimes could read a bit as a totally clueless stereotype of a neurodivergent character back in Station. She comes into her own far better in Vortex, where her fire-forged friendships with the rest of the crew and her new alien companions read as genuine and sweet, a welcome light in the story’s darkness of madness and bombing runs. Karla Arkourian, already my favorite character in the original story, gets more moments to reflect on the hardship she’s already survived and gets a few more opportunities to spit in the Grim Reaper’s face as she tries to warn earth of a coming war with the Agoc. And a substantial subplot about a displaced native tribe pulled into the conflict goes a long way in getting me to appreciate the human suffering on display thanks to even the story’s most tangential events.
It’s only going beyond these most significant conflicts that cracks start to show in the narrative. Individual stories throughout are mostly well executed, but Vortex also gives us a world populace that feels shallow and disinterested in the face of a wildly existential threat. And, as more wicked machinations and manipulations are revealed, Anderson seems a bit too cozy with the choices and actions of his trillionaire siblings, Margo and Benedict Noor. I won’t linger on what the story chose not to be, but it did feel a little incongruous.
Those bits of Earth’s pettiness aside, the intergalactic scale of the sequel really shines. Anderson’s various alien races all carry old scars from ancient, seemingly-endless battles with the Eldrich Agoc, but they’re still fighting to the bloody end, and feel unique in their interactions with the more singular personality driven humans compared to their hive minds and self-sacrificing tendencies. Faced against an enemy that inflicts madness by its very presence and has slaughtered untold civilizations (and maybe another evil force standing behind it,) it’s the old Lovecrafian instinct to shrink away in fear of the incomprehensible. Vortex instead joins the likes of DOOM and Warhammer 40K with a simple message from the beasts of bottomless pain and insanity: if you can bleed, we can kill you. Or, at the very least, if you can be locked up once, a genius like Cammie Skoura could lock you up again.
I’ve enjoyed this pair of books, and I think Nether Vortex is my favorite of the two. Simultaneously bigger, yet more effectively small and intimate for its cast. It feels as if the ending is pretty definitive, but if Anderson ever wished to return to his savant and her alien pals for another round with the forces of destruction, I think I’d be back.
Grab your copy of Nether Vortex from Weird Tales on 10/27/2026, and don’t forget to grab the first book, Nether Station.