Cover image of "My Sweet Satan," a science fiction novel full of surprises

You may think you can imagine what these six astronauts will experience on their journey to one of Saturn’s smallest moons. After all, this novel is one in a series of First Contact tales describing what might happen when human beings finally encounter extraterrestrial intelligence. The Copernicus is on its way to Bestla in response to a mysterious radio message. But they don’t have a clue what’s in store for them. Nor will you. From beginning to end, My Sweet Satan is full of surprises. Trust me. You will not anticipate what happens in this gripping story.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

One of the moons of Satan is broadcasting a Satanic message

You’ll think at first that you know perfectly well what’s going to happen. Author Peter Cawdron opens the novel with a synopsis, revealing that “when mapped by an unmanned probe, Bestla awoke and began transmitting a message, only it’s a message no one wants to hear: ‘I want to live and die for you, Satan.’” Well, maybe you don’t know perfectly well, but you’ve got a clue, right? Wrong.

My Sweet Satan (First Contact #6) by Peter Cawdron (2014) 264 pages ★★★★☆

Diagram of the fifteen largest of Saturn's moons which does not include one of the smallest, which proves to be full of surprises for astronauts who visit there
This diagram depicts the relative sizes of the fifteen largest of Saturn’s eighty-two confirmed moons. The tiny moon, Bestla, NASA’s destination in the novel, is far too small to be included here. No other planet, even Jupiter with seventy-nine, has more moons. Image: The Nine Planets

A journey to Saturn full of surprises

Nineteen-year-old Jasmine is sitting in a swing on the porch of her parents’ home in Atlanta. She’s enjoying the evening, contemplating her future at MIT and later, she hopes, as a NASA astronaut along with her boyfriend Mike. Suddenly, she wakes up in terror with a monster looming over her shouting her boyfriend’s nickname for her, Jazz. Then she dies, and the monster brings her back to life with what she later realizes are defibrillator paddles. Jasmine in on board a spaceship, and the “monster” is Mike, twenty years older than he’s supposed to be. She’s still nineteen, and he’s middle-aged. Or at least that’s what she thinks until she later looks in a mirror. Jasmine may look around forty, but she has no memory of anything beyond the age of nineteen. And that’s just the first of a torrent of surprises as the Copernicus slowly makes its way toward Bestla and a rendezvous with extraterrestrial life. By the time they get there, First Contact may seem an afterthought. But it’s not.

About the author

I’ve posted so many reviews of books by Peter Cawdron that I can’t bring myself to include yet another biographical note about him within this review. To learn more about this prolific Australian author, go to Peter Cawdron’s insightful First Contact book series or to any of the reviews about his individual titles. You may access them by typing his name into the search box in the upper right-hand corner of the Home Page.

For more reading

This novel is one of the many books in Peter Cawdron’s insightful First Contact book series.

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