Book Review: Crawlspace (2026)
No Spoilers
Crawlspace by Adam Christopher, narrated by Jennifer Pickens, was released on March 17, 2026 from Macmillan Audio / Tor Nightfire. The premise immediately appealed to me: deep-space isolation, faster-than-light travel, and a sci-fi horror setup that sounded like it could go in some genuinely eerie directions. The writing itself is good, and the audiobook performance is strong too. Jennifer Pickens made it easy to stay engaged on a sentence-by-sentence level, which mattered here because the prose was never the issue for me.
What held me back was the pacing. By around the 30% mark, I was still waiting for the plot to really grab me in a bigger way, and I needed more momentum earlier on. Even with that, I could tell this was building toward stranger, more overtly horror-leaning territory. The setup hints at voices in the corridors, symbols carved into the ship, and something ancient and dangerous gathering outside, so the story clearly has bigger ideas in mind than what it reveals right away.
For me, though, the balance leaned too heavily toward the slow sci-fi buildup for too long. I kept waiting for the tension to sharpen and for the horror to take hold in a more immediate way. When a premise promises this kind of isolated cosmic nightmare, I personally need the plot to start tightening its grip sooner. I could appreciate the atmosphere and the sense that the book was aiming for a larger payoff, but I never fully got to the point where the progression itself felt exciting enough for me.
That said, I can absolutely see the audience for this. Readers who enjoy slower-burning sci-fi horror, technical space stories, and a more measured build before the major horror elements come forward will probably connect with it more than I did. The concept is strong, the writing is solid, and the audio performance gives it an added boost. I just wanted the story to meet that premise with a little more urgency.
Overall, this was a case where I admired the setup, the writing, and the narration more than I connected with the actual movement of the plot. I can see what it was going for, but I needed more to be happening sooner for it to really land with me. 3/5.
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