Genre: Sci-Fi
Reviewer: Ulysses
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About The Book
Aliens seize control of Earth, descending without warning, cutting off communication systems and crushing military resistance. Aidan and his friends flee home from Chicago to rural Michigan, but learn the aliens control the entire planet.
Their leaders have dark intentions that Aidan and his friends uncover when they fall in with a revolutionary faction of aliens who desperately seek to save humanity. Human aid to the revolutionaries’ cause is essential but dangerous. As secrets and surprising histories are revealed, Aidan adds to his own chaos when he drifts into an unlikely romance.
As if ADHD and dealing with young adulthood weren’t enough stress, Aidan has to navigate his role in the conflict, as well as embrace his heart’s desire with an unexpected ally.
The Review
Damian Serbu’s story jumps right in, dragging the reader into a the alien invasion of the title. It’s quirky and odd rather than terrifying as it should be. That’s a hint as to how the rest of the narrative moves along. The cliffhanger about which the author warns you at the start did not bother me. I was so excited about the idea of what would come next, I sort of needed a break.
The narrative is every bit as unnerving and dark as an alien invasion ought to be; but it is also funny, and, oddly, romantic. That I didn’t expect, but welcomed once I realized that’s where the author was taking us. At the center of this is Aidan, a college freshman from rural Michigan, finally on his own in Chicago. He is the heart and soul of this book, inadequate and ridiculous and helplessly romantic. Backed up by his lifelong best friend Ellie and his new roommate Jarvis, Aidan is seriously ADHD and anxiety-prone. He is gay and has suffered the slings and arrows of coming out in a conservative small town. But he is also smart and loving, thanks to a family that has supported him all his life. In fact, the families of all three young protagonists are important. I love that about this book.
The big question is: are the aliens here to destroy us or work with us to save the earth? This is no small plot point, but somehow the author manages to keep the comic aspects of the story slightly more powerful than the darker, scarier aspects. Central to this is Aidan’s inability to shut up and control his bursts of emotion/fear/anxiety. This is true whether he’s dealing with an alien viceroy or his mom and dad.
I can’t go further into the plot without spoiling much of the fun the author has unrolling the details. Suffice it to say that this is nothing like any other alien invasion story I’ve ever known, and thus, when the end comes and leaves us with the promised cliffhanger, I almost clapped my hands with excitement. The potential for the plot of the next book makes you desperately want to see what’s coming. That strikes me as a success.
5 stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
