It’s the near future. Megacorporations have set foot beyond our planet—mining asteroids, colonizing the moon, riding herd on the bottom line. Earth’s gravity well imposes brutal strictures on anyone seeking escape velocity, but it’s worse for contenders who lack unlimited funding. And for two colonist couples chasing a dream, the thrill of barren lunar beauty may prove insufficient to patch their marital stress fractures. In Walking on the Sea of Clouds, Gray Rinehart draws upon his own extensive professional experience to depict a world of claustrophobic vistas and high-tech deprivation, where even the tiniest details in relational and logistical dynamics may determine the difference between failure and success, life and death. This novel’s style is literary, its pacing episodic, its science hard as a vacuum. Despite a meandering plot, tolerances are tight for marriage on the moon.

Best for: Adults seeking a slice-of-life missive from the pioneers of the 2030s.

Discern: Infrequent moderate language, occasional sexual innuendo, brief-yet-vivid descriptions of gore, and only briefly referenced Christianity.