4 out of 4 stars
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The Origin of F.O.R.C.E. by Sam B. Miller II is a science fiction thriller about an alien race known as the “Chrysallamans” from the planet Chrysalis coming to take over Earth. One of the Chrysallaman spaceships, however, accidentally crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. Since then, the Chrysallamans had to go back to their home planet 30 light years away to regroup and try to come back again to colonize the Earth. They left behind a damaged spacecraft, dead Chrysallaman soldiers, and one young Chrysallaman alien behind.
The Chrysallamans are highly developed “lizard” creatures whose mental and physical capabilities far outweigh the humans. Humans are nothing but tiny, pesky bugs to these aliens. They think they can easily colonize the Earth upon their return with more spaceships and colonists. However, they underestimated the humans’ resilience. Leaving behind their old technology and the surviving 12-year old alien Chrysallaman named “Whatsit,” the human scientists, military strategists, and government bigwigs set up a plan to study and replicate the advanced alien technology and come up with solutions to give the humans a fighting chance at surviving and defeating the incoming alien threat. They estimate the next alien invasion will occur in about 65-70 years. It’s time to get cracking.
What I really enjoyed about the book was how the author took actual key points in history and embedded them into this story. For example, in actual history there was thought to be a UFO that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. This was later explained to be just a crashed weather balloon. In the story however, this “weather balloon” is in fact a Chrysallaman spaceship that crashed and thus began the subsequent events.
This book could use some more editing. I spotted some typos and grammatical errors but they were few and far between and were not distracting. One of the major mistakes I noticed is that at one point, the aliens described orbiting spaceships around one of the moons from the sixth planet from the sun which was later described as Jupiter. However, Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun, not the sixth. There was a lot of biology and physics used to describe the technology and how it works. As someone with a background in biology, it was enjoyable to read about DNA and gene sequencing. Some of the physics did go over my head but everything was explained and cleverly written.
I really enjoyed reading about the characters, especially the alien Whatsit. He grew to be an incredibly important ally of the humans and Earth and it was so sweet to see how he defended and stood up for his beliefs. There was also some humorous dialogue between other characters which was a pleasure to read. The humor broke up the seriousness of the incoming alien invasion nicely. I rate this book 4 out of 4 stars. I highly recommend this book to science fiction lovers. This is one of the most creative and intelligent science fictions books I have ever read and I was extremely impressed to learn that this is the author’s debut novel. There is a sequel to this novel in the works and I look forward to reading it.
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The Origin of F.O.R.C.E.
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