The Home, Retirement & Other Misadventures Series
Retirement was supposed to be peaceful.
Instead, Kay Iman finds herself navigating unexpected animals, eccentric people, questionable rules, civic absurdity, and the occasional dragon.
The Home, Retirement & Other Misadventures series begins on Earth and later follows Kay to Golden Hour, a retirement community on Proxima b where peace and quiet prove surprisingly difficult to maintain.
Blending science fiction with dry humor, found family, community politics, and an ever-expanding collection of creatures, the series follows Kay, Butler, Dimples, and the people around them as ordinary life repeatedly turns into something that was definitely not in the brochure.
Each book stands on its own, but together they tell a larger story about starting over, finding home, and discovering that a quiet life does not necessarily mean a boring one.
What People Who Don’t Exist Thought of
Home, Retirement & Other Misadventures
I asked AI to read the books in the Home, Retirement & Other Misadventures series as several fictional readers of different ages, backgrounds, and reading tastes. These are simulated reader reactions, not actual customer reviews.
Linda, 68
retired teacher, rarely reads science fiction
“I expected the dragon to be the unusual part. It wasn’t. The people, the bureaucracy, the neighbors, the rules—that all felt disturbingly familiar. The Shape of Home surprised me because underneath the humor it really is about how a family changes over time and how you keep going when people and animals you love are gone. By the time Kay gets to Golden Hour, I understood why she wanted peace so badly. Then This Was Not in the Brochure proceeds to make sure she doesn’t get any.”
Marcus, 44
longtime science
fiction reader
“This is science fiction about ordinary life after the future has already arrived. People can cross interstellar space, live on Proxima b, and raise dragons, but they still have neighbors, pets, grief, homeowners associations, and administrative notices written by people who should not be allowed near a thesaurus. I liked that the technology was simply part of the world instead of constantly stopping the story to explain itself.”
Jenna, 29
fantasy reader and
animal person
“Dimples is what got me interested, but I didn’t expect the animals to have so much emotional weight. She isn’t just there to be a cute dragon. Watching her try to understand why Terry doesn’t come home was probably the part that hit me hardest. Then in the second book she’s back to being an intelligent little menace while Butler takes his responsibilities much too seriously. I would read an unreasonable number of books about those two.”
Daniel, 52
reads comic novels
and satire
“The humor works because nobody stops to announce the joke. A dragon can be cited for ‘atmospheric enthusiasm,’ a stray bird can create an administrative crisis, and everybody involved discusses it with exactly the seriousness the paperwork requires. The second book is funnier than the first, but the first gives the comedy somewhere to stand. Without Kay’s history, Golden Hour could have been a string of HOA jokes. Instead, it becomes a story about her accidentally acquiring a community when she had specifically gone somewhere to be left alone.”
Ruth, 73
widow; lives in a retirement community
“Some of this was much too recognizable. Not the dragon. Unfortunately. The committees, notices, rules, neighbors, and the peculiar assumption that every small irritation requires an official policy? Absolutely. What I liked most was that Kay doesn’t decide she needs to become a different person after losing Terry. She just has to figure out what her life looks like now. Golden Hour isn’t the peaceful retirement she ordered, but by the end I think it may be the one she actually needed.”
Maya, 36
reads mostly contemporary & women's fiction
“I wouldn’t normally pick up a book because it was set on another planet, but these didn’t feel like books I had to ‘understand’ science fiction to read. The Shape of Home felt like a family story that happened to include a dragon. This Was Not in the Brochure felt like a retirement-community comedy that happened to be on Proxima b. What connected them for me was Kay slowly learning that home isn’t really a place you preserve. It keeps changing shape, whether you agree to it or not.”