More excitement surrounds Kameron Hurley’s APOCALYPSE NYX.

NERDS OF A FEATHER, FLOCK TOGETHER praises the book.

I was worried that some of the politics and technology of Nyx’s world might have escaped me in the years since I read Rapture, but I needn’t have been. Hurley is brilliant at developing worlds that makes little sense on the surface (how are all those bugs powering their cars?) but where the internal logic and the matter-of-fact acceptance from the characters makes it easy to just take everything as it comes. The plots are sufficiently twisty, though not immensely complex or original – but, again, that’s not really the point. Whether you’re coming to Nyx for the first time, or after reading one or more of the novels, what APOCALYPSE NYX offers is the grimdark version of a comfort read: action, well-placed aggression and bizarrely satisfying emotional frustration that will have you reading through your fingers.

Nisi Shawl for THE SEATTLE REVIEW OF BOOKS enjoys the return of Nyx.

Pulled together from novellas published primarily on her Patreon fundraising site, Kameron Hurley’s APOCALYPSE NYX (Tachyon)is a welcome return to the adventures of the author’s iconic hard-fisted anti-heroine.

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These five glimpses into her passage from an explosives expert fresh off a centuries-old battlefront to a bounty hunter in war-ravaged cities and villages show her being both tender and tough, both reckless and cynical. My favorite story’s the final one, in which Nyx notes how ridiculous it is for a killer like herself to have a panging conscience — but declines a ride home out of the desert from colleagues who set fire to a house full of children anyway.

At the Spanish-language site SPOILER FANS, Lilianny Araujo recommends APOCALYPSE NYX.

Each story is like a wild ride through a minefield in an old truck. They are narrowly drawn, implacably violent, and without apology are light in the exhibition. The reader is pushed into chaos from the beginning, which is both challenging and brutally convincing. I admit that I did not know what was happening at the beginning. Is this real? but in the middle of the second story, Nyx had me holding on to the balls. I got into this so much that I immediately went back to reading the first two stories and was as happy as I think most fans of Grimdark’s fiction will be to read this.

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I usually talk about issues in the reviews because I think they contribute to what the reader gets from a book. Forget that. Let APOCALYPSE NYX surprise you with its deep representation of a person in constant intellectual and moral crisis, and do not worry about what it means. You will be immersed in love, lust, hatred, revenge, desire, and you will question the value of human life. You will empathize with Nyx for his faults but you will be horrified by his lack of human consciousness. It is a heady mix and very entertaining.

Is it dark night? You can bet your ass yes. Try not to support Nyx while getting rid of innocents who get in the way of the next reward. That’s impossible. And the question of gray morale itself makes a couple of discrete appearances in the stories and in the delicious jokes among your monster crew. If you are reading this review, then obviously you appreciate grimdark. Grab this good introduction to life and the world of Nyx. You will not regret. Highly recommended

(Translation from Spanish, courtesy of Google.)

On TOR.COM, Brit Mandelo appreciates the collection.

It’s a pleasure-read, a set of stories that push the same buttons, but those happen to be buttons I can appreciate. APOCALYPSE NYX isn’t the place to start for a reader unfamiliar with Hurley’s work. For that I’d recommend a more recent novel such as The Stars are Legion (reviewed here as well). However, for a reader who’s interested in seeing a bit of Nyx before the series—Nyx the total fucking disaster of a person, Nyx the monster, Nyx who can’t connect and can’t communicate and lives on the fine line between a death-wish and a death-drive—this collection will scratch the itch.

10 BAD HABITS includes the title among Favorite Reads June 2018.

I am a huge fan of Hurley’s Bel Dame series and this book is a collection of short stories that serve as something of a tangential prequel to that series. Former Bel Dame, turned mercenary Nyx is still a battered and rebuilt veteran of the ongoing brutal war on her world, and here she’s putting together the team she’ll have around her in God’s War. If there’s something of a through line to the book’s stories, it’s Nyx’s struggle to be slightly less awful than the default awfulness of her surroundings. She might not have a completely functioning moral compass, but it works from time to time. Violent bug-fueled science-fantasy is my jam.

For more info on APOCALYPSE NYX, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Wadim Kashin

Design by Elizabeth Story