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S.D. Rhodes is a science fiction and horror author living in Central Texas with his wife. A lifelong lover of storytelling, he spent years developing ideas before finally deciding to bring them to life. His novels blend suspense, survival, and richly imagined worlds where ordinary people face extraordinary dangers.
Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
In S.D. Rhodes’s What Hears You, Tara Venn pilots Scout Four into Ilyr before the colony ships and crashes into a marsh world where sound can kill. Alone with injuries she cannot afford and a transponder that only flickers amber, Tara first thinks the local predators are hunting by sight. Then the Sere begin repeating her distress tone. Soon, they use her name, turning the wreckage into bait. Her route away from the burned scout carries her through root corridors and into hidden passages kept by Eran’s people, who have survived by reading how sound moves through the walls and floor. As Tara learns that more humans are coming to build on Ilyr, her own survival becomes part of a larger warning that must reach the ships above before the colony repeats her mistake.
S.D. Rhodes’s What Hears You is brilliantly written, and Tara Venn gives the novel its strongest pull in a genre where female survival leads can too easily become posture. Rhodes gives Tara a mind that is as sharp as a tack, and keeps learning after fear should have taken over. The Ilyr setting feels credible because its dangers have rules, from algae that changes when touched to root halls that carry sound toward the Sere, who turn any noise into a map. I love how Tara has to become less readable after realizing each answer has taught the predators how to hunt her. Eran’s route lessons make the alien society feel lived in, while Niri’s last correction keeps the mission larger than one person. This is intelligent science fiction, and readers who like alien-contact survival stories will adore it. I'm excited to see where Rhodes takes us in the sequel. Very highly recommended.
