If what hooked you in Beacon 23 was the war-haunted keeper alone at a deep-space lighthouse, talking you through his routines, close calls, and moral quandaries, you’ll love following Ryland Grace waking up alone aboard a ship with only his wits to keep him alive. The same intimate, confessional feel—one person, one mission, one fragile lifeline—drives the story, with life-or-death fixes stacking up just like the beacon operator’s day-to-day triage to keep passing ships safe.

In Beacon 23, the solitary keeper’s confessions feel raw and real—until they don’t, as his trauma, selective memory, and guilt tint what you’re reading. Annihilation leans into that same unnerving uncertainty: the Biologist’s field journal slips between precise observation and self-erasure, making you question every discovery in Area X much like you questioned the beacon keeper’s version of his skirmishes, near-misses, and orders followed—or not.

If the most compelling part of Beacon 23 was being locked inside the beacon keeper’s head—his battlefield scars, panic spirals, and self-doubt as he decides who lives or dies—then this delivers that same psychological intensity. You’ll descend with Gyre, sealed in a caving suit with only a voice in her ear, as isolation, fear, and manipulation strip her down the way isolation in the beacon stripped your narrator, forcing choices that haunt every step.

You enjoyed how Beacon 23 reads like a direct line into the keeper’s head—his sardonic logs, blunt admissions, and reluctant bravery. Murderbot’s first-person voice hits the same sweet spot: wry, prickly, and painfully honest about fear and responsibility, narrating crisis management in real time the way the beacon operator talks through ship-saving emergencies and the messy ethics that come with them.

If you were drawn to how Beacon 23 foregrounds people—the haunted keeper, the lives depending on his judgment—and lets the tech fade behind the moral weight of each decision, The Sparrow will resonate. The Jesuit-led journey to another world unspools through testimony and memory, digging into faith, guilt, and consequence much like the beacon keeper’s reckoning with orders and fallout when a split-second choice can’t be undone.