Alan Rodgers (1) (1959–2014)

The crash of an alien flying saucer at Roswell did result in the death of three aliens, but also the survival of one alien infant, whom the government names Pandora. She is hidden away in a secret bunker in Ohio. Even though Pandora is over 40 years old, she is still a child because time is distorted around her - she isn't moving through time the same way we do. Then an incident happens that causes Pandora to escape from her captors and the survival of the Earth may hang in the balance.

At the beginning of each chapter Rodger's mentions a modern myth or urban legend, for example: Roswell, the devil in a malls basement, zombies, UFOs, crop circles, haunted trains, and an alien invasion. The chapter then ties in the myth he mentions to the story of Pandora. This organization of the chapters has the capacity to be clever, but I'm sorry to say that once Pandora made her way to a shopping mall, started shopping, and kept calling herself a little space alien girl who is looking for her daddy, I could no longer take the story seriously. It became a comedy for me.

Despite my viewing the novel now as a comedy rather than sci fi/horror, it was intended to be, it certainly a compelling, entertaining story and kept my interest - and laughter. If you happen to find a copy, as I did in the clearance section of the local used book store, I'd recommend it as an entertaining book, but don't go out of your way to find it. http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/

… (mere)

A bit long, a bit melodramatic, a bit plodding, I found myself thinking fondly of Stephen King's The Stand as a more enjoyable apocalyptic story. Certainly more fun. This was a dark story, no sense of humor here at all. There were a lot of characters working towards one goal and they were mostly sympathetic, unlike the antagonist of the story who was poorly drawn, a caricature of the ultimate bad guy. There were no shades of grey here, just dark, dark, dark, and I found it a struggle to get through.… (mere)

In general, I enjoyed reading this book. I enjoyed learning about the characters and the parts that they played in the story as it unfolded. There were parts of the story that I didn't see coming and I definitely could not have predicted how it would have ended which made it even more memorable. The only distraction from the story that I had was the grammar. They occurred often and made me stop and think of the grammatical error and if it was something that could be dismissed as a unique style or was it an error plain and simple. I think that the story would be a better easier read without these distractions.… (mere)

Very poor.
The opening almost isn't too bad, but then the author feels that he understands biology, which is an error. Mixing religion into it just doesn't make it work any better, and the massive continuity errors, complete failure of any form of conservation of matter, or basic physics just spirals the whole thing into farce. It's supposed to be revelation day Apocalypse is coming can our heroes save the day, sort of story, But frankly who cares about any of them.

In the same lab a scientist makes a genetically modified ecoli that can resurrect a trilobite from it's fossil, while an evil researcher is making the Beast from Revelation. But fails and so has to resort to surgery. The ecoli escapes and is far more powerful than expected, indestructible, it rises any corpse it comes across to a fully animate original, complete with personality and memories. For soem reason humans don't feel hungry or need food but all the animals do. Pigs regrow from cuts of pork, and go on the rampage. It's never clear whether the same pig is raised multiple times from a string of sausages or just once. This is a more interesting question than whether the evil religious scientists and his buddies including the president of the US can be stopped from precipitating nuclear war.

The silliness goes on. I did finish it, but only to find out how bad it was going to be.… (mere)