Allied: First Contact, Blake Ridder, Amazon Digital Services, Inc., 2013 (Reviewed by Paul Lappen for the Kindle Book Review) Prequel to an upcoming novel, this novelette is about an Earth whose climate changes from normal to catastrophic seemingly overnight. Ethan is your average resident of England who wakes up one morning to find a hurricane going on outside his window. He grabs Cara, a young woman who lives in the same high rise apartment building, and they get out of the building before it collapses. Making their way to the nearest Underground station, they find it jam-packed with people, who start disappearing. They find an open shop, where a man named Fisher gives them a partial explanation. What looks like a permanent overcast cloud cover has made any watching of the sky impossible. Fisher has a cousin named Jake, who is currently aboard the International Space Station. Jake tells Fisher of some Very Interesting Things going on in orbit, not least of which is the sudden appearance of an alien spaceship. The secret mission of the astronauts is to investigate the alien visitor. Jake is the only survivor of the crew, by being taken aboard the alien ship. Ethan, Cara and Fisher also find themselves on board. The ship is run by a group of humanoid aliens who just happened to be in the vicinity. They quickly realized that the only way to save humanity was to take as many of them as possible aboard their ship. Conditions on Earth are getting worse, so going back home is not an option. What do they do now? If the writer can keep up this level of writing in the upcoming novel, then it will be very much worth reading. The story is short, and has believable characters. It is more than worth checking out. (The Kindle Book Review received a free copy of this book for an independent, fair and honest review. We are not associated with the author or Amazon.)