Science fiction | Volition: An Extra-Terrestrial Incident | JD Lowes
A fairly standard alien abduction story. Actually, it's more about the interactions between two of the four friends involved in the first abduction (the youngest one, physically challenged, was abducted). There is lots of dialogue between them, much of which could be cheerfully cut in half, but which actually makes them into more than cardboard characters. There are also aliens, govt officials who ought to know better, a number of characters who appear and then don't do much, a dog and a grumpy cat (who is there just for lulz).
The aliens are in contact with govt agencies, and exchange tech in place of being allowed to abduct people. It's not clear why that is expected to make sense.
There is a lot of whee-magic! in the story. References to pop culture movies abound. The alien is a mix of omnipotence and ineptitude. The various agencies indulge in a lot of jargon-speak. The motivations of the bad guys are never clear. The motivations of the good guys are a bit better placed. There are astounding amounts of naivete, and very little plot tension, which makes for a fairly shallow story, though with TV-level special effects.
There are also spelling mistakes, I regret to say. Rappelling is not repelling.
However it gets 3 stars because, while not great, it's not a bad book and probably better than some of the potboilers that actually see the light of paperback sales. All in all, a reasonable lazy Sunday read when you have nothing better to do.
You can get it here.
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