OF MONSTERS AND MAINFRAMES, fun and funny space cozy horror story

OF MONSTERS AND MAINFRAMES
BARBARA TRUELOVE
Bindery Books/Ezeekat Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction For the week ending January 18, 2026

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: LA Times Bestseller ** 2025 Goodreads Choice Award Finalist ** Spotify Best Book of the Year

Spaceships aren’t programmed to seek revenge—but for Dracula, Demeter will make an exception.

Demeter just wants to do her job: shuttling humans between Earth and Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, her passengers keep dying—and not from equipment failures, as her AI medical system, Steward, would have her believe. These are paranormal murders, and they began when one nasty, ancient vampire decided to board Demeter and kill all her humans.

To keep from getting decommissioned, Demeter must join forces with her own team of monsters: A werewolf. An engineer built from the dead. A pharaoh with otherworldly powers. A vampire with a grudge. A fleet of cheerful spider drones. Together, this motley crew will face down the ultimate evil—Dracula.

The queer love child of pulp horror and classic sci-fi, Of Monsters and Mainframes is a dazzling, heartfelt odyssey that probes what it means to be one of society’s monsters—and explores the many types of friendship that make us human.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I remember The Ship Who Sang cycle of stories from the 1960s. Anne McCaffrey'se sentient ship made me both shudder...what a horrifying fate, to be trapped in a partial life as the brains of a machine!...and thrill...no bodily death! incredible adventures no way you'd have otherwise!, but I never once thought of that ship being thought of by its peers and its employers as a possible serial killer. What a cool twist, I thought as I downloaded the DRC. Even cooler because she's named after the ship that brings Dracula to Whitby! And Dracula in space? A cast of Universal Studios monsters helping Demeter clear her name? Hell to the yeah!

Using an AI in place of McCaffrey's human brain while adding a medical AI (called Steward) as a foil, an equal rival, the story gets all the squicked-by-Humankind fun of Murderbot and all the pathos of the misunderstood Other trying to live its life out as it sees fit with the technology-based humor (the AI runs on battery packs, with humorous possibilities well-mined by Truelove) that keeps you on the readerly hop.

It was fun, it was funny, it was a good afternoon's entertainment. I was never inclined to put it down, I wanted to know "...and then what?" but, honestly, it was light on larger ideas so I can't go much over three-and-a-half stars. It's the kind of book I'll recommend for SF fans who aren't squeamish (or arachnophobic) because the counterpoint to the humor is horror. It's a niche that will, I suspect, attract imitators because it goes down so easy.

A story that really does a good job of wiling away a few hours most pleasantly. Don't expect your mind to be blown and make sure the genre is agreeable (very low steam in the romance department, too), and you're okay with spiders and a dose of gore less than a Stephen Graham Jones novel but still there. Smiles await you if those are all true.