Review: The Glass Garden - Jessica Levai

Genre: Sci-fi Novella

Published: Lanternfish Press, May 2025

My Rating: 4/5 stars

“…Life permanently fixed in a homage to itself. An offering to beauty…”

Novella’s are often hit-or-miss for me, and yet sci-fi novella’s (specifically cosmic sci-fi novella’s) are in some league of their own. I’m a sucker for these things! I will happily immerse myself in a 800+page-brick of a space-opera, but there’s something truly special about an author being able to evoke the same level of wonder, existential dread and lingering questions within the span of less than 150 pages… Jessica Levai’s The Glass Garden is thát.

The story is, in many ways, one you’re already familiar with: a space-crew arrives on a distant exoplanet and uncovers a strange (alien?) artifact amidst the ruins of a long-extinct space colony. In an attempt to understand this strange anomaly, they are caught up in Lovecraftian forces beyond their comprehension, that are equal parts mesmerizing and horrifying.

The prose is beautiful, the atmosphere tense and enchanting, and the characters add an extra layer to the story that I honestly wasn’t expecting. Our protagonist and her sister Lissy have a very interesting dynamic, which really added to the tension and the stakes of the mission.

Based on the story, atmosphere, writing and execution; this could’ve been a 5-star novella. Minus 0,5 star because it does march a very predictable path towards an inevitable end with few surprises along the way.

The other half star, it loses because of a couple of mistakes I noticed. There were two spelling mistakes/typo’s in the ebook (e.g. “mine” being misspelled as “mien”). Additionally, the space ship is named “Maris Stella”, which is supposed to be an inversion-play on “Stella Maris” (star of the sea), making the ships name “Sea of Stars”. Except that’s not how Latin works, and changing the word-order makes no difference. The correct way to make it say “Sea of Stars” would be something like “Mare Stellarum”.

Neither makes a difference to the plot, if you’re going to price your indie-published book at a similar point to traditionally published novels, the editing should be on par with those.

You can find this book here on Goodreads.