#hell's heart

[untalented-but-opinionated]

Books I Loved in 2026: Hell's Heart by Alexis Hall

"A beast doesn't have to be a god... to be well worth staying away from" That much, at least, was true. And by the same token a man didn't have to be an angel to speak prophecy. He just had to open his eyes.

[wearethekat]

September Book Reviews: Hell's Heart by Alexis Hall

I received a free copy from Tor Books via Netgalley in exchange for a fair review. Publish date March 10th, 2026.

I've been a longtime fan of Alexis Hall's, and I was interested to see what he'd do in his science fiction debut. In Hell's Heart, aimless and self-destructive I- signs on a space whaling voyage in order to flee her merciless medical creditors, who own her body and soul. In this retelling of Moby Dick, she begins to realize that their charismatically deranged captain is hell-bent at hunting down the leviathan who injured her--even at the cost of her life and the lives of the entire crew.

Well! As someone who's familiar with Herman Melville's Moby Dick, I should not have been surprised that the lesbians in space retelling had a pace as slow as molasses, interspersed with endless and aimless asides to the reader. Because I- states directly how the book ends from very early on, the four hundred plus pages of boat antics and Leviathan slayings feel like mere filler before the ultimate end. The effect is exacerbated by narrator I-, who is passive, depressed, and has a very detached perspective that makes the narration feel distant. I know many of you like your women soggy and pathetic, but personally I prefer the aggressively digging themselves deeper into a hole type rather than the facedown on the floor type.

By far the strongest point of the novel was the worldbuilding. Since the original novel was set midway through the process of driving whales nearly to extinction in the Atlantic, it's fitting that the retelling is also set in a capitalistic hellscape, albeit one set in a retro-style Solar System limited space future. While I- has mostly left the awful religion she was brought in (a grotesquerie of a certain type of prosperity Christianity), she accepts the values her culture presents her without much question, and drops the awful little details as casual little asides. Onboard the ship, shower minutes are billed and taken directly out of their wages. I's surgery (implied to be gender-affirming) puts her in debt to a pharma-corp conglomerate, and if she misses a payment, they can repossess her organs. People can be sold into debt-slavery for the crime of inheriting a patented gene complex. And so on and so forth. It's a fitting accompaniment to the grim plot.

Overall, Hell's Heart is a throwback to Hall's complex early steampunk novels rather than his frivolous recent historicals. It certainly isn't a romance novel--while I- has unhappy escapist sex with a number of women, there's no romance and nothing I'd consider a full sex scene. However, I did enjoy I-'s crewmate and sometimes-lover Q-. Q- is from Earth, speaks nearly exclusively in untranslated Latin in the text, and has a sort of smartphone reference device that I- doesn't understand and refers to as her "idol". Alas, Q- is almost entirely opaque to I-, who doesn't really understand her, and therefore to the reader as well.

There's some fantastic details here, but not much substance. I think this would have been a much stronger work chopped down into a novella.

[critical-quoter]

If I'd been more pious I'd have explained to him about the Father's love and how it could be his at very reasonable rates. If I'd been a better blasphemer, I'd have shown him how to build a pyre out of dogma and warm himself beside it.

Hell's Heart - Alexis Hall

[readingtillmidnight]

Hell's Heart by Alexis Hall

Release date: 12 March 2026

Genre: adult science fiction

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

If you are looking for:

Hunting space whales in Jupiter's orbit

Satire of religion and late stage capitalism

Inevitable tragedy

Lots of casual sex and sex jokes (but ironically no dick jokes?)

I know every SFF book with lesbians gets comped with Gideon the Ninth, but this book really does give me GtN vibes I prommy

Finding herself with no money and little to occupy her groundside, the narrator (“I”) takes a commission aboard the hunter-barque Pequod as it sets out in pursuit of precious spermaceti. Once aboard, however, she finds herself pulled inexorably into the orbit of the barque’s captain, a charismatic but fanatically driven woman who the narrator names only as “A”. As the Pequod plunges ever deeper into the turbulent, monster-haunted atmosphere of the gas giant, the narrator begins to lose herself in the eerie word of Leviathan-hunting and the captain’s increasingly insistent delusions; the only thing that might keep her grounded is the bond she develops with Q, a woman from the wreck of Old Earth whose skin is marked with holographic light and who remembers things otherwise lost.

Review:

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC!

Disclaimer: I have not read Moby Dick. I know what it's about, but I haven't read it, so I can't say how Hell's Heart compares to the original.

I looked at the other reviews on Goodreads, and damn. Opinions on this book seem pretty divisive. A lot of reviewers DNFed this, and not gonna lie, I was initially very tempted to. This book starts out incredibly slow and meandering, and that never really changes. But about 40% of my way in, something clicked and I started to vibe with it a little more.

I think this book is better enjoyed if you go into it knowing that it's more of an exploration of character and the intersection of capitalism and religion, with the space adventure serving as the backdrop rather than being the focal point.

The narrator, who calls herself "I", is a mess. She's broke, she's passively suicidal, she can't communicate or talk about her feelings, and she can't stop making terrible sex jokes. A lot of reviewers find her annoying, which, yes, I absolutely get that. Her narration is very rambly, as she constantly goes on tangents to lore-dump about worldbuilding, and none of her sex jokes were funny. (The constant sperm jokes were especially unfunny.) People also seem to dislike that she has sex a lot.

The thing is, I love her. Her narration, which I initially found tedious, worked a lot better for me once I realised that she is deeply, deeply traumatised. The "I" presently narrating these past events, comes off as incredibly sad in spite of her humourous tone. Her sex jokes, made only to the readers, are desperate attempts to keep us reading her story despite the inevitable tragic ending, while her off-tangents always come before significant plot points, like she's trying to delay having to tell it. The past version of "I" living in the narrative, who sleeps around a lot, is trying to find emotional connection while being emotionally avoidant, and she makes terrible decisions because her life is terrible and she wants to die. I can see how people find her unlikeable, but that is simply because they don't get her like I do <3

Speaking of the narrator having lots of sex, I have to be clear--none of that sex is explicit and most of it is off page. I saw somewhere that rated this book 4 chili peppers, so I was a little let down when I realised this wasn't as explicit as I was expecting. The sex in this book is more for character exploration than for titillation, which is fine and good, just don't expect otherwise.

I have varying feelings regarding each of the narrator's relationships. I don't want to reveal too much so I'll keep this short: 1) Q is the coolest and best one by far, 2) "A", the captain, is supposed to be super cool and impressive, and while I personally don't see it, I understand why she would find "A" appealing, and 3) Locke is a straight-laced bureaucrat-type, so I assumed they were sort of boring at first, but they were actually kind of the most appealing of these three to me.

The worldbuilding here is incredible by the way. I had expected the space whales to be, like, just whales in space. But they turned out to be properly incomprehensible alien creatures, with thousands of tentacle legs under their bellies and topped with shells covered with eyes. Very cool stuff.

There is also a lot of satire of religion, which given all that goes on in the world now, is perhaps not that satirical at all. There were some bits where Bible verses are interpreted in.... interesting ways. Which made me snort, because holy shit, some of them were not too far off from how people in the present day talk about the Bible.

Late-stage capitalism is also in full effect. The narrator's body is owned by a megacorporation, unless she can pay off the debt she owes them for her (heavily implied to be gender-affirming) body modifications. The wealth disparity is ever growing, and just about everything costs money. Honestly, none of what happens in this book seems that outrageous, which is kind of a bummer. A lot of satire feels a lot less satirical nowadays.

The narrator is very clear from the start about how this book ends, but I was still shocked at the end. Somehow, I ended up caring about these characters more than I realised. When the ending was coming I found myself desperately hoping that the ending would turn out differently.

Omg, this review turned out a lot longer than I expected.... kind of like the book. Overall, Hell's Heart was a challenging read, but one I found immersive and rewarding.

Content warnings:

Death, violence, injury, blood, gore

Suicidal ideation

Animal death (space whales and space critters)

Sexual content (non-explicit, but there's a lot of it)

[evenaturtleduck]

Just got home from the library and realized I apparently have a favorite cover art format and color scheme

[thelongestway]

Y'know, Alexis Hall had me at "oh wow, ke actually went for @elodieunderglass's Moby Dick retelling in tiresome modern idiom, except in space", that is--page one.

But the moment I see a sci-fi Terran with glowing skin speak Latin as her main language, and the third phrase out of her mouth is "pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo", the author has bought me hook, line and sinker. I'm like 13 pages in, and I love this already.

Upd: and by page 21 I actually have to brush the dust off my dictionaries. Mate, I am having so much fun. (Not just with the language--that's icing on the cake! The world ke paints, with hunting Leviathans via gas-giant diving, is great, the religion is fun, and the protagonist has an excellent voice and is a joy to follow!)

[pagesandpothos]

Hell's Heart by Alexis Hall: Cover Reveal

One of my most anticipated books of 2026 is Hell's Heart by Alexis Hall and we just got the (US) cover reveal!

Gideon the Ninth meets Murderbot in USA Today bestselling author Alexis Hall's thrilling SF debut, Hell's Heart! They are monsters, legends, gods. 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 “the cerebrospinal fluid of gargantuan, quasi-psychic space monsters”. I joined the hunt hoping to get paid and maybe laid, but mostly paid. Instead, I followed a captain chasing abominations in the skies of Jupiter. We battled the Möbius Beast itself, there in the red eye of the world. Spoiler: we lost.

Hell's Heart will be published on March 10, 2026 and can be pre-ordered here!

Storygraph | Goodreads

[theshriekingsisterhood]

Nandor fell forward onto his hands, more blood spraying against the black ice as his back heaved with his horrid coughs. Guillermo watched him in silence. They locked eyes as Nandor took a deep breath. Biting his own lips hard enough to bleed, he suppressed a scream as he grasped the dagger and wrenched it out, more blood pouring onto the ice, pooling beneath him, marring the reflective sheen. Instantly dropping the dagger, he looked at his badly burned hand, the flesh refusing to heal.

“Fuck… Look at what you’ve done... It is agonizing...”

He held out his damaged hand to Guillermo, who looked at it impassively. It’s been agony. It’s been agony for eleven excruciating fucking years…  

In (slightly belated) honor of my friend @uv-duv​ Duv’s birthday, and also because Hells Heart as a fic series just slaps and I’ve always wanted to draw this scene from my favorite installment of the series, “The Chain”. Please read these if you like pathos and surreal mindfuckery and road trips and Nandor and Guillermo beating each other up.

Ice Texture created using the following Unsplash images: X X

Detail Images Under the Cut