This is a light-hearted, fast-paced Space Opera with no particular concern for scientific accuracy or plot logic. It is more concerned with personalities, relationships and entertainment.
The hero is Joe Hanson, a farmer with an interesting background that makes it almost plausible that he might cope with being kidnapped by an alien and, through a logical process of mildly improbable events, take off into the galaxy to clear his name from a charge of murder.
The conflict involves a lot of people making common and not-so common mistakes and being surprised at the result. Including the readers. For example, the alien innocently flies his spaceship over Area 51. When the fighters attack, he can’t understand how they are tracking him because his ship has no electronic or radar signal. Unfortunately, he forgot to turn the landing lights off.
So much for the bumbling space nerd. Enter the crooked project leader, who is planning his own un democratic relationship with Earthers. The story stops being lighthearted about now, and becomes quite violent, so don’t let your ten-year-old read it.
The plot becomes even more improbable, with our hero surviving an eight-page “knife fight” (only one knife) with an alien the size of a football lineman. To be fair, they do a lot of talking and not much fighting. But by this stage in the story we are getting rather attached to Joe, and we’re quite happy to believe that he could win this altercation.
Nobody is happy, however, when the loser goes and dies, setting the whole action moving. This mostly involves a lot of discussion about how to solve unsolvable problems, with each solution pulling them further from reality and farther into space, until Joe ends up getting beaten up by a couple of bent cops in a police station on a foreign planet.
The only place I felt let down was when the final big escape scene comes along, it takes place in a rather non-sci-fi factory building and involves a lot of running up and down stairs and dodging around machinery. I mean, it’s very tense and exciting, but it palls after a while.
However, our hero finally satisfies us with a good old space battle, and he returns to Earth for a maybe-happy ending with the girl of his dreams.
A fun read, though long.
4 stars
This review was originally posted on Reedsy Discovery.
