Antimatter Blues

A Mickey7 Novel

By: Edward Ashton

Narrated by: John Pirhalla, Katharine Chin

Edward Ashton's Antimatter Blues is the thrilling follow up to Mickey7 in which an expendable heads out to explore new terrain for human habitation.

Summer has come to Niflheim. The lichens are growing, the six-winged bat-things are chirping, and much to his own surprise, Mickey Barnes is still alive—that last part thanks almost entirely to the fact that Commander Marshall believes that the colony’s creeper neighbors are holding an antimatter bomb, and that Mickey is the only one who’s keeping them from using it. Mickey’s just another colonist now. Instead of cleaning out the reactor core, he spends his time these days cleaning out the rabbit hutches. It’s not a bad life.

It’s not going to last.

It may be sunny now, but winter is coming. The antimatter that fuels the colony is running low, and Marshall wants his bomb back. If Mickey agrees to retrieve it, he’ll be giving up the only thing that’s kept his head off of the chopping block. If he refuses, he might doom the entire colony. Meanwhile, the creepers have their own worries, and they’re not going to surrender the bomb without getting something in return. Once again, Mickey finds the fate of two species resting in his hands. If something goes wrong this time, though, he won’t be coming back.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

Critic reviews

"Ashton’s breezy characters, especially a few alien creepers able to communicate with the humans, delight, and the grungy details of colony life are rendered as realistically as Mickey’s hunger pangs. It’s good fun with a surprisingly effective closing twist that sci-fi fans will savor.: --Publishers Weekly

"Ashton’s follow-up to his excellent Mickey7 (2022) is just as much fun as its predecessor." --Booklist

Great story

Another great story and narration. It feels like there is more ahead for Mickey, but maybe that's wishful thinking.

Love these characters

This book picks up right on time. The story concludes the first book and can move forward to a new adventure and new planets. What a great story teller. I really care about the characters.

surpasses the first book!

honestly I enjoyed this entry even more than the previous one in the series. with some of the core dynamics of the first book dealt with, this book focuses more on exploring the setting of the two books and was a very enjoyable read. not super long but very enjoyable.

Amazing Sci-Fi.

The humanness of the events of such a philosophical story with the hard-to-predict plot kept me listening nonstop.

Solid follow-up

As strong as the first. I appreciate that the characters had a strong romantic relationship that was neither the focus of the plot nor used as a tragedy trope, People, even main characters, have relationships that exist outside of the main story. It's nice when that happens.