Revenant X is a great, unnerving Sci-Fi horror with a fast paced and tense story, though personally it doesn’t quite live up to the high bar set by the first book in the series. I won’t include any spoilers for either book here, but the story of Revenant X is a direct follow-on from Paradise-1, and I feel the first book is necessary for understanding the storyline and character motivations.

The story of Revenant X revolves around a team crash landing on a planet, and finding the local colony abandoned under suspicious circumstances. Finding out what happened to the colonists is the order of the day here, and the result is a tense and compelling narrative that maintains its fast pace throughout. Description of the enemies certainly helps this - despite some hostiles being quite ‘abstract’, I thought their nature built a ton of tension in the novel by itself.

The characters carried over from Paradise-1 are developed in this sequel with more emotional depth, and it’s good to see the psychological weight of the events of both books taking a toll on the protagonists; it gives the narrative a bit more depth, and provides the book with greater stakes.