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Review: Arkoma by Calum Lott

January 27, 2025 by Will Swardstrom Leave a Comment

Rating: 8.25/10

Synopsis

BLOOD IN THE SAND. BLOOD ACROSS THE STARS.

Hiding from her tortured past, Nelsa endures deadly duels by day and drinks herself numb at night. While she rots away in the saloons on the outskirts of Arkoma City, the ruthless Salazano tightens his stranglehold on the desert planet and the stars beyond.

After an unlikely proposition sends her on the path of vengeance, Nelsa must rally her fellow outlaws for a daring heist that will change the course of the wild Frontier forever.

Review

Who doesn’t love a good heist? I am a huge fan of Oceans 11, 12, and 13 and find them all crazy re-watchable. It’s definitely aged worse than some other movies, but The Italian Job is still a fun movie. And ask any Brooklyn Nine-Nine fan and they’ll tell you that some of the best episodes were the annual Halloween Heist installments. 

When I received Arkoma from the author in exchange for an honest review, I was initially a little worried. The heist genre can be difficult to pull off. There can be a lot of moving pieces, backstabbing, and all the different personalities sprinkled throughout the crew planning the theft. Thankfully, I found out that Calum Lott was up to the challenge. In the end, I had a rollicking good time reading Arkoma. 

Arkoma is a fairly short novel and it bleeds revenge and action with each chapter. Our protagonist, Nelsa, is haunted by her past and the deaths of her husband and two children. Haunted in a very literal sense because the man responsible for the deaths recorded them and sent her the video after their deaths. With a thought, Nelsa can bring up the video and practically live through her family’s deaths as if she was there that day. 

So when she’s offered the chance to rob the killer, Salazano, of his most prized possession, Nelsa leaps at it and drags her friends along with her. Her merry band of thieves is wildly different and inventive. You can see the bones of a typical heist throughout the book, but Nelsa’s trauma and thirst for revenge throws a moon-sized monkey wrench into the plans and makes for a very different story than your typical Ocean’s 11 rewatch. 

I know that Arkoma takes place in the same universe as Lott’s other work, A Dirge for Cascius. I haven’t read that book, however, and I was more than able to read and enjoy Arkoma without that background. I had a great time with Arkoma and will be on the lookout for new stories from Calum Lott in the future.

Arkoma releases on Tuesday, January 28, 2025.

Filed Under: Aliens, Heist, Reviews, Science Fiction, Space Opera Tagged With: Arkoma, Book Review, Calum Lott, Heist, Revenge, Science Fiction, Self Published

About Will Swardstrom

Will S. loves books of all varieties, but thrives on Fantasy and Sci Fi. He spends his days in Southern Illinois teaching middle school history and learning all the latest Internet trends from pre-teens. He enjoys spending time with his wife and kids and watching British detective shows. In previous lives, he's dabbled in radio, newspaper, writing his own speculative fiction, and making Frosties at Wendy's.

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