Exiles

By: Mason Coile

Narrated by: Ashley Morton

A New York Times Book Review Favorite Book of 2025

A terrifying locked-room mystery from the author of William—this time set on a remote outpost on Mars.

The human crew sent to prepare the first colony on Mars arrives to find the new base half-destroyed and the three robots sent to set it up in disarray—the machines have formed alliances, chosen their own names, and picked up some disturbing beliefs. Each must be interrogated. But one of them is missing.

In this barren, hostile landscape where even machines have nightmares, the astronauts will need to examine all the stories--especially their own--to get to the truth.

Exiles is a terrifying, taut, one-sitting read, and Mason Coile once again blends science fiction and psychological horror to engage some of humanity’s deepest questions.

Quick Reaction

I saw this book today in the NY Times; it was not sponsored or an ad. I only buy audiobooks now, but I have a lot of access to them outside of my Audible account. I'm super stingy using my now 15 credits. Just reading the description, a paragraph or so, and I bought it on Audible. It's sadly short, about 5 minutes; however, I am loving it right off. So, I could be wrong; in that case, I'll post an EDIT or POSTSCRIPT boldly to this review. I've made a mistake b4, but I'm not feeling that. I don't write many reviews on Audible because if you own the book from an outside source, you can't post a review or access the SUPERIOR player - This isn't right. I pay well over a hundred dollars a year for the access. The prices aren't great. But the ease and use of the site and player surpasses any of the 5 other app players I have, including Tunes, a close 2nd. If Audible wants credible reviews, then restrict reviews to members, but a flat ban is limiting other users' or potential users' info. Any suggestions for players with easy placeholding and/or bookholders, the latter being most important, will be great!

The ending

Loved the places characters went in their heads to add details and scenery to an otherwise “locked in one room” story format! Brilliant.

I think I was hoping for something a bit different

The narrator kind of drove me nuts for this one, and I felt like I kept needing to speed up the narration so I didn’t focus on the narrator as much. 😩

Aside from that, I don’t know how I felt about some of the writing choices made here. There’s just something about a man writing a female characters trying to capture the feeling of “women issues” that gives it a flavor of inauthenticity. The main character wasn’t very likable for the majority of the book, as none of the human characters were particularly interesting. I liked maybe the last bit of the book where the horror aspects really came out to play, and overall I did like the ending. I was mostly disappointed by most of this little story, but I’m glad I read it because it is yet reminding me how much I really love science fiction!!

Yes!

This book is amazing! The book hooked me from the beginning. It held my attention the entire time. This is a fast-paced science fiction quick read. The book is about a crew sent to Mars to prepare the first-ever colony. Once they arrive, they find their base half-destroyed, and their three robots sent to set up in disarray. All kinds of stuff are going on y’all. We got aliens, murders, alliances, and other kinds of stuff. It’s a who done it Sci-Fi, and it’s exceptional!

Interesting story

Wow! What a set of twists and turns. This was engaging until the end. Would recommend!