Tense action and steadily building suspense collide with high stakes and a paranoid atmosphere in Demon in the Sand, the follow-up to the YA Titan of the Stars by E.K. Johnston.
Apprentice engineer Celeste should have died when Titan, the Mars-bound luxury spaceship on which she worked, crashed--her friends watched as she sacrificed herself for them. But Dominic, Celeste's new confidant and the child of an engineer who helped harbor alien specimens on the ship, watches medics pull Celeste out alive. Dominic is convinced this Celeste must be inhabited by an alien. Ren, Celeste's best friend, isn't sold on the "possible alien possession," but for now, Celeste is unconscious. Just as Ren and Dominic start integrating into the Mars base, Celeste wakes up and weird things start happening: a human arm is found in one of the waste recycler filters; a "virus" is running rampant; and Dominic and Ren discover a nest of alien eggs. Some have already hatched.
As in Titan of the Stars, Johnston uses dual first-person perspectives, featuring Dominic's and now Ren's point of view. This keeps readers guessing about Celeste's alien (or not) status, while free-verse vignettes from the aliens' perspective provide eerie moments of unsettling foreshadowing. Themes of class disparity and survival remain at the core of this gripping sci-fi horror thriller that's just as gory as the first, with aliens projecting themselves out of humans and splattered bodies "flayed down to the bone." This atmospheric space adventure keeps readers on edge as it barrels toward an unexpected ending. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader