‘Exiles’ Is the Sci-Fi Novel I Need To Tell You About

I missed reading Exiles by Mason Coile this year until I was given it as a holiday gift by my daughter. This horror/thriller about an expedition to Mars was neither given nor received as an admonition, but we were both surprised that I had totally missed it and I wanted to share it with Book and Film Globe readers.

Exiles  
By Mason Coile
G.P. Putnam’s Sons; 224 pages

I’m not a big fan of writing year end lists, but the imminent turn of the calendar does provide a convenient moment to rectify any glaring omissions. I wanted to give some guidance on R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis but I didn’t think I could be fair, I was so sick of fantasy meets academia.

So, though there are probably many other important books I missed, Coile’s final novel is worth a mention: not least because there will be no more. Sadly, it’s two and out for the author of the enjoyably frightening William, because Coile is the sci-fi pseudonym of the thriller and horror writer Andrew Pyper who passed away right at the beginning of 2025 from complications of cancer.

Coile’s novel takes its title and some themes from a short story by Ray Bradbury called “The Exiles.” Bradbury’s story — approved by Gore Vidal as Bradbury “at his best” — follows a rocketship crew heading to Mars who get roiled by contact with forbidden stories: that is, from authors and books that the Earth has banned. While Coile’s Exiles does not follow Bradbury by featuring the characters of Charles Dickens, Ambrose Bierce, and Edgar Allan Poe it certainly does borrow tropes of gothic horror from the latter two.

In Coile’s novel, a group of nations has banded together to send three astronauts to Mars to begin a settlement. Kang, Gold, and Blake wake up from “extend-sleep” to pilot the landing pod down to the Gale Crater where bots and robots have set up the Citadel on the flat plains near Mount Sharp. They will make the base habitable for humans and establish proof of principle so that real, fertile colonists can arrive and set up a full settlement on Mars. What proceeds is half scary thriller and half sci-fi procedural. Which is to say, it feels a lot like Andy Weir meets Stephen King.

Or perhaps it is partly Agatha Christie since the novel is a whodunnit where three robots and three humans comprise the suspect group. As the story unfolds and and the murders that punctuate the novel strike ever close to home, the possibilities narrow. However, the winnowing also brings into the picture the previously fanciful ghosts and aliens as potential killers. The publisher describes Exiles as a locked room mystery which is odd, given its setting in the entire expanse of space (or, at least, the entire Martian orb). But it makes sense because the Citadel is the only room with a humanly breathable atmosphere for 200 million miles.

We follow the perspective of Dana Gold, the crew doctor, from the time that she wakes up until the end of her adventure. As with Weir’s novels, there’s not a second wasted, but unlike Weir’s plots that unspool with tension through cascades of engineering decisions, Coile presents us with murders, sabotage, and emergent, smart, psychological observations. As she runs repairs, treats people, and investigates murders, Gold also has to dwell on her own history and — most importantly — why she would choose such a life of exile.

I would quibble with the publisher on a small issue, I think it is best read in two-sittings. Otherwise, despite the distaste, I have to agree with the publisher again, but “Exiles is [indeed] a terrifying, taut, one-sitting read.”

Correction: On January 22, 2026, “Gore Vidal” instead of “Vidal Gore.”