Jitterbug

By: Gareth L. Powell

Narrated by: Jilly Bond, Edward Mitchell, Penelope Rawlins, Ana Clements

In this twisty and action-packed adventure from the BSFA award-winning author of Descendant Machine and Future’s Edge, a crew of bounty hunters find themselves ensnared in a conspiracy on the very fringes of the devastated solar system. Perfect for fans of James S. A. Corey and Adrian Tchaikovsky.

“On Earth, they depicted justice as blindfolded and impartial, but out here on the frontier, she was red in tooth and claw.”

Jupiter and Saturn are gone, and a mysterious force has built a huge habitable sphere from their ashes. When criminals try to lose themselves on this new frontier, bounty hunters like Copernicus Brown and the crew of his sentient ship Jitterbug get paid to hunt them down. But when Brown rescues Amber Roth, sole survivor of a pirate attack, the Jitterbug and her crew find themselves the target of powerful political factions who want control of the data chip hidden in Roth’s stomach.

And all the while, something vast and ancient creeps towards them from the depths of space....

©2026 Gareth L. Powell (P)2026 W. F. Howes Ltd

I wanted to love this!

I have loved every other Garreth Powell book I’ve ever read except this one. I can’t really explain why, other than this story is thin, the build up is slow and disappointing. It’s just not engaging or interesting. The worst part is the narration. The voices don’t match the characters and the “acting” is terrible. There’s no depth to the way the characters are voiced and it always sounds like a high school play, the accents are ridiculous. It’s just flat. In all fairness, there are one or two slightly interesting aspects to the plot but they all seem like I’ve heard them elsewhere, notably Firefly. I wanted to love this but I just don’t.