For a science fiction book about an alien race interfering with our world, the most alien part of this book is the author’s relationship with emotions, religion, and women.
This book tries to do a lot of things at once – reflect on religion, explore a mother-daughter bond, speculate about alien life, and deliver a stirring action tale.
It fails
To be fair, it almost succeeds in the speculation about alien life. I’m firmly convinced that’s only because the author is some kind of alien in a writer’s suit, and he loves to talk about his fellow aliens.
Beyond that, he never once connects us to the characters, the story, or the point. Most of the action is told in summary, and what little is shared with us, is bland, unconvincing and over in minutes. The writing is sparse in tone and completely devoid of connection to character or emotional beats, but natters on for days about ideas. The author can’t seem to make up his mind if he’s writing for young people, grown adults, or his fellow aliens. I never could quite figure out if this is a boring book for young adults or a pointless one for grown people.
Let’s talk about the emotions in the book, because that’s what the author did, talk about them while never actually showing any evidence of them on the page. We’re told the mother and daughter adore each other, and yet we never see any actions to back it up. No mother’s hand on the daughter’s shoulder during a crisis, or any rush to comfort each other when things go wrong.
The emotional remove in the writing is so clinical that it could be a scholarly paper titled, “The familial bond as demonstrated by a fictional mother/daughter relationship.” Honestly, I’d rather read that.
Leaving the emotions out of it (much like the author did) the discussion about religion is dry, pointless, and ultimately doesn’t go anywhere. The mother’s religion is talked about at great length, but it feels like it was written by someone who neither believes nor understands the religious experience, and nothing ever comes of it, so it just felt like another dead end.
Speaking of dead-ends, there are several deaths in the book, including a rather important one, and it’s all glossed over within a paragraph or two. No one really mourns, if they even notice. People are disposable in this book, and that makes it hard to care about the next character slotted into the next section or scene.
This isn’t a terrible book – if you’re an alien trying to understand humans. If you’re a human who wants to see what an alien thinks about us, I guess it’s worth a try. Just don’t expect much. Even so, you might still be disappointed. This is an idea book, but the ideas are not interesting enough to make up for the lack of literally anything else.
2 could-have-been-an-email stars
