Think all those stories about UFOs and alien abductions are bunk? Whitley Strieber’s new book, The Grays, disagrees. In this work of fiction, aliens do exist and are about to make the ultimate human contact. For years they’ve been following the life of one special little boy, Connor Callaghan, whose very conception they orchestrated. Now they must send one of their own into Connor’s soul in an attempt to understand the human race and save both species. But not everyone on earth is ready to let the grays carry out their plan. A group of wealthy and powerful men, known as The Trust, is inherently skeptical of the grays and will do anything to stop them from enacting their plot, even if it means destroying all of humanity. Ultimately, the survival of both humans and the grays rests in the hands of Connor Callaghan and his neighbors in a small Kentucky town. The novel ends with plenty of action and suspense and lends itself well to another installment.
Strieber paints vivid and imaginative scenes throughout the novel, whether describing extraterrestrial phenomena or the snow-packed Kentucky landscape. However, his creativity does not come through so well in his characters, who tend to be stereotypical. Most are middle aged, white males with some kind of either intellectual or military power (or both). There are no strong females represented in the story, only an overly-doting mother and a sex-crazed Air Force officer; each scene with the mother involves some kind of gushing sentiment for her husband or son, and each with the officer an analysis of her sexual feelings, past and present. Connor Callaghan himself is so full of self-importance that it’s difficult to sympathize with him as he’s being taunted by classmates or even as he’s being invaded by the grays. Strieber passes up another opportunity to add depth to his characters through their conversations, during which it is impossible to tell one voice from another. This adds to the difficulty readers may have in keeping characters straight and makes this a purely plot-driven novel. Regrettably, the plot leaves too many loose ends to be satisfying. This is most evident when The Trust causes a major earthquake in Washington, D.C., near the end of the story, which kills the president but seems to have no clear or lasting purpose overall. Finally, the plot is weakened by clumsy sentences that feature unnecessary repetition, frequent contradictions, and obscure references—like the one to Swedish actor von Sydow—that are simply meaningless to many educated adult readers, let alone young adults, and really have no place in the story. Even the small details that Strieber doesn’t get quite right, like when the Air Force officer’s colleague refers to her as “soldier” (a term used for Army personnel, not Air Force) rather than “airman” or by rank, detract from the narrator’s reliability and the overall believability of the story. Although The Grays introduces an interesting story and is marked by some vivid and creative descriptions, it feels more like a novel in its draft stages than a finished work.
Content:Mature readers. Book deals with a good amount of inter- and extra-marital sex.
Rating (0 - 10 scale): 3
Reviewer Age: 26
Reviewer City, State and Country: New Braunfels, TX USA
