Review: The Photonic Effect by Mike Chen

I have been a Mike Chen fan since his debut and have read everything he has put out since. So when I tell you it genuinely surprised me to realize that The Photonic Effect is his first space opera, I mean that. Everything he writes has always felt space adjacent to me, like his books exist in the same emotional atmosphere as the genre even when they are not technically in it. I guess Star Wars counts but this is different. This is Mike fully in his own universe and it is a lot of fun. Fair warning: there are spoilers below.

Many thanks to Mike and Saga Press for sending me an early copy, which in no way impacted my review (my adoration of Mike’s words…..that’s another story haha)

The Photonic Effect

by Mike Chen
Published by: Saga Press
on April 21, 2026
Genres: Adult, Sci-Fi
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From New York Times bestselling author Mike Chen comes a page-turning space opera in which a starship captain and her crew receive a distress signal and find themselves at odds with various factions of a galactic civil war—for fans of Alastair Reynolds and Adrian Tchaikovsky.

After ten years trapped across the expanse of space, Captain Demora Kim and the crew aboard the Horizon are finally home. Only it’s not the home they know. The Cluster, formerly a peaceful cooperative between planets, is on the verge of collapse due to a civil war.

A way to end the conflict may lie in the limitless energy that trapped the Horizon crew halfway across the galaxy and the engine they crafted to bring them home. But that means going back to the pocket of space they’ve only just escaped.

Demi isn’t sure she’s up for the task. She fulfilled her promise. She brought her crew home. Maybe it’s time to walk away. However, leaving everything behind won’t be as simple as she thinks. Conspiracies are afoot, loyalties will be tested, and Demi’s choices could shake the foundation of the galaxy.

Review

The Photonic Effect follows the crew of the Horizon, a starship that spent ten years trapped in a gravity well and has now returned home to a Cluster that has fractured into civil war. Captain Demora Kim wants to keep her crew out of it. That is not going to happen. The book runs multiple POVs and the science is genuinely complex enough that the first stretch requires some patience, but Mike does what he always does: he finds the heart that grounds everything, and once you find it you are not putting this down.

Neera is my favorite. He is a Dywen engineer and the emotional anchor I needed to get my footing in a book that is otherwise throwing a lot at you very fast. With multiple POVs I always look for the thread that is going to make me care about everyone else, and Neera is that thread here.

The teleportation element is wild and I kept thinking about The Fly, which Mike told me he has actually never seen because the commercial scared him as a kid, which is extremely fair. The covert ops reveal involving the villain Sadler got me completely. I spent a good portion of the book reading Sadler as neurodivergent and being charmed by the way he just showed up and ignored decorum, and then the reveal hit and I had my Hans from Frozen moment. You think you know what kind of story you are in and then you do not. And through all of it, the universe is also quietly collapsing into itself, which is something the book lets you almost forget about while you are invested in everything else and then brings back when you least expect it.

If you are a Trekkie you are going to love this. If you loved Project Hail Mary, this is your next read. It has the science, the found family, the stakes, and the kind of ending that makes you want to sit there for a minute when you finish.