Book 13 for my 2026 goal of 36 books for the year! Still keeping a decent pace.. As usual, my link to the book is through my bookshop.org affiliate account, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy from there.

I’ve been internet friends with Jendia Gammon for quite a few years now, have read some of her first science fiction novels, and have kept an eye on her career with interest! She has more recently been in a publishing boom with works coming out in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, and even a Choose Your Own Adventure book. I decided it was time for me to fully catch up on her writing and we did a book swap — I sent her my popular science books and she sent me a few of her recent books. My first choice to read was her speculative thriller/horror novel Atacama (2025).

The title refers to the Atacama Desert in Chile, the driest non-polar desert in the world, a place that likely has received no significant rainfall from 1570 to 1971. It is a place so inhospitable that NASA uses it as a training ground for proposed searches for life on Mars.

Such a place would seem far removed from East Tennessee, but when a research group from an Appalachian university is found dead in the Atacama, it is a traumatic event for the entire university community. Fiona Hawthorne is hit particularly hard, as her best friend Alva was one of those on the Atacama research trip. She hardly has time to process her grief, however, before the mysterious corporate funders of the research project arrive on campus, demanding any information or correspondence that anyone might have from the researchers.

Fiona suspects a coverup, and her suspicions only grow when it is announced that the bodies of the dead researchers have disappeared. She enlists her coworker Lafe Lambert to see what they can learn about what really happened — and why the corporation seems particularly interested in Fiona’s activities.

But when people start to go missing on campus, Fiona starts to realize that there may be an even bigger threat beyond corporate goons. Something has come back from the Atacama, and it has plans of its own and no qualms about doing whatever it can to achieve them…

Atacama is a fun, fast-paced novel! I read the whole thing over a couple of days and read the last 100 pages in a single sitting, as I was really eager to learn how it all turned out. Gammon has compelled a thrilling science fiction horror tale that somehow made me think of the best of The X-Files (though I think the cover art intensified that impression)!

Speaking of art, each chapter begins with a small illustration by Gammon herself and these illustrations add an extra bit of charm and immersion to the story.

One other thing I appreciate about the novel in this day and age is that the chapters are relatively short and self-contained, which makes it easy to sneak in a chapter or two during a busy schedule.

The revelations of the novel were quite interesting and satisfying, and the story went in strange directions that I couldn’t have predicted. Some secrets were a little more telegraphed than others, though I think that was also a deliberate choice by the author! It is often fun when the reader has just a little bit more awareness of what is going on than the characters in the story.

Overall, Atacama is an enjoyable work that blends science fiction and horror. It is labeled as a “speculative thriller” by the author, and that captures the feeling and the content of the book perfectly!