Hell’s Heart Review — Is It Worth Reading?

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Verdict: A ferociously voiced, genuinely inventive queer space retelling of Moby-Dick, undercut by the same digressions, drift and doom that make the original a hard read — and by a joke it tells a few hundred times too often.

Best for: Readers who love a loud, unreliable, fourth-wall-breaking narrator and literary science fiction with teeth, and who are willing to forgive slow stretches, repetitive crude humour and an ending the source material gave away in 1851.

Heat level: ★★★☆☆ (3/5 — open door)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.1/5 — a 3.22 Goodreads average and a 24% did-not-finish rate on StoryGraph)

Tropes: Classic retelling, obsessed captain, monster hunting, unreliable narrator, trans heroine, forced proximity aboard ship, religious cult, found crew, doomed voyage, sapphic entanglement.

Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall is a standalone novel from Tor Books and the author’s first full step into science fiction — a sapphic, trans-led, deliberately filthy reimagining of Melville set above a dead Earth, where the hunter-barque Pequod tracks Leviathans through Jupiter’s storms, and where a broke, rebuilt, self-destructive narrator signs on for the money and finds herself bound to a captain whose only interest in the universe is killing one white beast. It belongs as much on our literary and character-driven fiction shelf as it does anywhere near speculative sapphic fiction.

It has a 3.22 average across 1,958 Goodreads ratings, a warm reception from nearly every professional outlet that covered it, and a 24% did-not-finish rate on StoryGraph — nearly three times the 9% this site has previously flagged as high. That gap between the critics and the readers is the whole story of this book, and both sides of it are worth understanding before you start.

What Is Hell’s Heart About?

Hell’s Heart is science fiction first, horror second and a love story only at the edges — and the author’s own note says outright that it is not a romance. It follows the shape of Moby-Dick closely: an outsider joins a hunting crew, a captain’s private obsession swallows the voyage, and the digressions about the hunted creatures take up as much room as the plot. Here the whales are Leviathans, vast creatures swimming in the atmosphere of Jupiter, and the oil is spermaceti, the fluid that keeps what is left of humanity running now that Earth is gone.

The narrator has no name beyond “I.” She is poor, in a body that has been extensively rebuilt, and — as several reviewers and the author’s own content notes make clear — a trans woman whose relationships are with women. Captain A is the Ahab figure, with total command of the crew and exactly one target. Q, who speaks in Latin and remembers the lost Earth, is the closest thing the book has to a love interest. Everything comes through the narrator’s first-person voice, which digresses, lies, jokes and addresses you directly, and whether that voice works for you decides whether the book does.

What Makes This Sapphic Sci-Fi Retelling Work

• The narrative voice: The most-praised element by a distance. Critics and five-star readers alike single out the narrator’s meta, self-mocking, fourth-wall-breaking commentary, and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books named the voice as the book’s great strength.
• The worldbuilding: Leviathan biology, the economics of the hunt and a hollowed-out post-Earth society are consistently called clever, and Kirkus credits the book with plausible futurism.
• The satire: The crew’s slide into a cult worshipping a god who will devour the universe draws repeated praise as sharp commentary on prosperity-gospel religion and capitalism.
• Queering the classic: Readers who know Melville enjoy how thoroughly the book reworks his all-male ship into a queer crew and puts a trans heroine at the centre of it — still too rare a thing in sapphic science fiction.
• The audiobook: Charli Anne Delores’s narration has its own fan base, and listeners specifically praise her voices and accents.

Book Synopsis

Earth is gone, and the people who survived it live scattered through the solar system on whatever the Leviathans provide. The creatures drift through Jupiter’s storms, and the fluid inside them is the most valuable thing humanity has left. Hunting them is lethal, badly paid work for the people who actually do it, which is exactly why a narrator with no money, no prospects and very little attachment to her own survival goes looking for a berth.

She finds one aboard the Pequod, under a captain known only as A. The crew is strange and tightly bound, the voyage is expected to take years, and the ship runs on routine, boredom and sex as much as on the hunt. She also finds Q, a woman who speaks in Latin, carries memories of a planet nobody else has seen, and becomes the one fixed point in a life the narrator is otherwise determined to wreck.

But A is not really hunting for profit. Somewhere in the red depths of Jupiter swims the Möbius Beast, pale and legendary, and the captain has organised an entire existence around finding it. As the crew’s faith turns stranger and the ship goes deeper, the narrator has to decide how far she will follow a captain who has already decided how this ends.

My Review

The voice is extraordinary, and I want to say that first because most of what follows is qualified. The narrator talks to you, argues with you, admits she is lying to you and apologises for the digression she is about to inflict on you, and at its best the effect is the rare feeling of being cornered at a party by the most interesting person in the room. Hall takes the most intimidating novel in the American canon and makes it funny, horny and furious about money and religion at the same time.

The worldbuilding is the second genuine pleasure. The Leviathan chapters are Hall’s version of Melville’s cetology, and they are better integrated than the originals — a biology of the unknowable that makes the hunt feel both mundane and obscene. The crew’s descent into a cult is handled with the same dark humour, and the satire of faith as a business model lands harder than anything else in the book.

Where it struggles is pace, and this is not my personal gripe — it is the single most repeated complaint in the reader reviews, and StoryGraph’s 24% did-not-finish rate is nearly three times the 9% I flagged as high on a title reviewed here in August. Around 42% of StoryGraph readers call it slow; Goodreads reviewers describe the middle as filler and the Leviathan material as infodumping. Stacked on top: the sperm jokes, which several reviewers say stopped being funny early; a narrator who, by design, feels very little for long stretches, which some readers found distancing rather than devastating; and a thin supporting cast — 47% of StoryGraph readers say the characters do not develop.

One expectation to reset: this is marketed on the strength of the name behind Boyfriend Material, and Kirkus warns that fans of the author’s romances may be disappointed — several low-star reviewers are exactly those readers. The author says plainly it is not one. Q matters, but the relationship is not the spine of the book, the sex is frequent and deliberately unromantic, and the ending follows Melville. If a romance is what drew you, recalibrate; if Melville is what scared you, relax — you do not need to have read him.

My honest note: A brilliant voice attached to a book that tests your patience as much as the original does. If digressions and a doomed ending are deal-breakers, the 24% who quit are your people. If you can ride the voice through the slow middle, there is nothing else in sapphic fiction quite like it.

Element	In Hell’s Heart
Central relationship	The unnamed narrator & Q, with Captain A as the obsession at the centre — a sapphic entanglement rather than a romance arc
Core tropes	Classic retelling, obsessed captain, monster hunting, unreliable narrator, trans heroine, religious cult, doomed voyage
Setting	The hunter-barque Pequod in the storms of Jupiter, in a future where Earth is dead
Heat level	3/5 — open door, frequent and deliberately unromantic
Series	Standalone — no sequel, no cliffhanger, and not a happy ending
Content notes	Graphic sexual content including rough sex, gore and violence, death, suicidal ideation and depression, references to dysphoria and internalised transphobia, religious oppression, toxic relationships, animal hunting and dismemberment, debt and indentured servitude

How Spicy Is Hell’s Heart?

A 3/5. romance.io places it at 3 of 5, “open door” — though only 15 readers have rated it there, so treat the band as indicative. Reader reports suggest the frequency runs higher than that band implies: sex is a constant presence aboard the ship, Locus’s review mentions a great deal of it, and the author’s own content notes list rough sex. What keeps it out of the top band is intent. The scenes are frank but mostly brief, often played for comedy or self-destruction, and several readers describe them as emotionally detached rather than steamy.

The element worth flagging in advance is the tone rather than the content: the bawdy humour is relentless, and the sperm jokes in particular are the most-cited irritant in the low-star reviews. At least one reviewer notes BDSM elements; no reviewer I found flags anything beyond that. For this heat level in more romantic hands, In the Vanishers’ Palace and A Day of Fallen Night sit in the same open-door band.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: a strong narrative voice matters more to you than plot momentum, you enjoy retellings that argue with their source, you want sapphic and trans characters in literary science fiction with some horror in it, and you are comfortable with crude, sex-positive humour.

You may want to skip it if: you have limited patience for digressions and slow middles, you came for a romance with an arc and a happy ending, you find repeated bodily-fluid jokes wearing, or you need a protagonist who grows rather than circles.

In short: one of the most distinctive voices in sapphic fiction this year, attached to a book a quarter of its readers do not finish.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (September 2026)

This is a traditionally published lead title, and the discourse looks like one. Goodreads giveaways ran in October 2025 and January 2026, early copies went out through NetGalley, and the Amazon listing carries praise from John Scalzi, Sarah Gailey, Charlie Jane Anders and Locus, plus Scientific American calling it “Equal parts funny, saucy and philosophical.” Professional reception has been almost uniformly positive: Kirkus (unstarred) sums it up as “Moby Dick, but make it queer SF”; Smart Bitches, Trashy Books gave it a B+; Fantasy-Hive named it a book of the year; the Skiffy and Fanty Show enjoyed it despite a slow start. I found no Publishers Weekly, Library Journal or Booklist review, and I could find no BookTok moment — the only short-form video I turned up was a single YouTube review. I could not check Reddit from here. Amazon files it under LGBTQ+ science fiction, not romance, where it sits at 3.8 across 103 ratings. The audiobook, narrated by Charli Anne Delores for Macmillan Audio, runs 14 hours 18 minutes.

Prefer audio? Listen to Hell’s Heart on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The voice, first and most consistently — “meta” and “chaotic” recur, and Fantasy-Hive’s reviewer found the narrator’s direct address hard to step away from. Then the worldbuilding, which even two-star reviewers concede is clever. The religious satire and the anti-capitalist edge get named repeatedly. Q has admirers, and at least one reader says the ending moved them precisely because the narrator spends the book pushing you away.

What readers argue about and complain about: Pace, above everything. “Slow,” “drags” and “tedious” run through the low-star reviews, the middle reads as filler to many, and several of the did-not-finish reviews quit somewhere between 20% and 40% of the way through. The humour is the second theme: the sperm and sex jokes are called repetitive and juvenile, and some readers feel they undercut the book’s serious moments. Third: the narrator. Some find her magnetic; others call her insufferable or passive, a character who watches everything and feels very little. Beyond that, recurring notes on infodumps, a thin supporting cast, a romance that never arrives for readers expecting one, and Q speaking only in Latin, which wore at least one reader down. The ending divides: some found it earned, others felt the predetermined doom drained the tension from the final quarter.

The standalone question worth asking first: it is a standalone, and it resolves — but not happily. romance.io tags it non-HEA and it follows the course of the novel it retells, which readers note you can see coming from the first page. If you want Hall writing sapphic fiction with a lighter touch, Mortal Follies is the obvious next step, though at a 3.39 Goodreads average across roughly 8,800 ratings it has divided readers too; its sequel, Confounding Oaths, rates higher at 3.62.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Hell’s Heart a romance?

No. The author states it is not a romance, and readers agree: the narrator’s relationship with Q matters, but the book is literary science fiction with horror elements, and it does not end with a happily-ever-after.

How spicy is Hell’s Heart?

A 3/5. romance.io rates it 3 of 5, “open door,” and readers describe sex as frequent but often brief, comic or deliberately detached. The author’s content notes include rough sex.

Do I need to read Moby-Dick first?

No. Readers who know the original say it adds layers, but Smart Bitches, Trashy Books says familiarity is not required, and at least one four-star Goodreads reviewer who admits to not knowing the classics still enjoyed it.

Does Hell’s Heart have a happy ending?

No. It follows the shape of Moby-Dick, and romance.io tags it as having no happy ending. It is a standalone, so there is no cliffhanger either.

Is there an audiobook?

Yes — narrated by Charli Anne Delores for Macmillan Audio, running 14 hours 18 minutes. Listeners praise her voices and accents, though at least one reader who bounced off the page says the audio did not save it.

If You Loved Hell’s Heart, Read These Next

The obvious match is Gideon the Ninth, which runs the same irreverent, joke-a-line voice over gore, faith and a doomed, isolated cast. If it was the monstrous deep that got you, Our Wives Under the Sea takes sapphic ocean horror somewhere much quieter and sadder. And for science fiction about who pays for humanity’s survival, The Space Between Worlds tells a tighter story about expendable workers with a love story at its heart.

For more in this register, browse our best lesbian sci-fi books list or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Hell’s Heart is a book whose ambition is its whole point. The narrator’s voice is unlike anything else in sapphic fiction, the Leviathan worldbuilding is genuinely clever, and the satire of faith and money cuts deep. It is also slow, repetitive in its humour and built around an ending you know is coming — and a quarter of StoryGraph readers put it down before they got there. Whether that trade is worth it depends on how much you love a voice for its own sake; the reader who does gets one of the strangest and most alive books of the year. Check Hell’s Heart on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Hell’s Heart ranks as an audacious literary sapphic SF retelling — electric in voice and worldbuilding, held back by pace and a joke that wears thin, and best approached as a Melville remix rather than a romance.

The Evidence Scorecard

Overall ★★★☆☆ 3.1/5

• ✓ 3.22 average across 1,958 Goodreads ratings
• ✓ Near-uniform praise from Kirkus, Locus and SBTB
• ✓ 3.53 on StoryGraph, 3.8 on Amazon
• ✓ 24% did-not-finish rate on StoryGraph

Romance ★★★☆☆ 2.6/5

• ✓ Q gives the narrator a fixed point
• ✓ Queer desire is everywhere aboard ship
• ✓ Some readers moved by the ending
• ✓ Author says outright it is not romance

Characters ★★★☆☆ 3/5

• ✓ Narrator’s voice is the headline draw
• ✓ Captain A is a magnetic obsessive
• ✓ Trans heroine written from the inside
• ✓ 47% of StoryGraph readers see no growth

Writing ★★★★☆ 3.6/5

• ✓ Critics praise lush, meta prose
• ✓ Leviathan chapters are clever cetology
• ✓ Religious satire lands hard
• ✓ Sperm jokes and infodumps wear readers down

Emotional Impact ★★★☆☆ 3.1/5

• ✓ Depression and self-destruction handled honestly
• ✓ Doom builds real dread
• ✓ Ending lands for readers who stay
• ✓ Narrator’s detachment keeps many at a distance

Heat Level ★★★☆☆ 3/5

• ✓ romance.io rates it open door
• ✓ Sex frequent throughout the voyage
• ✓ Rough sex in author’s content notes
• ✓ Scenes often detached rather than steamy

Ending ★★★☆☆ 2.9/5

• ✓ Standalone with no cliffhanger
• ✓ Faithful to Melville’s shape
• ✓ Moving for readers who buy the voice
• ✓ No happy ending, visible from page one

Re-read Value ★★★☆☆ 2.9/5

• ✓ Allusions reward a second pass
• ✓ Delores’s 14-hour audiobook widely praised
• ✓ Voice worth returning to for fans
• ✓ Slow middle discourages a reread

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