Timothy Zahn, The Green and the Gray

The Green and the Gray

Timothy Zahn

Tor, Sept, $27.75, 446 pp.

ISBN 076307170

In 1928, extraterrestrials that looked human went through Riker's Island to become citizens of their new home. The Greens were chased off their home world by the Grays in a war that started over a simple misunderstanding. The Greens did not know that the Grays, in order to escape the Others, followed the Greens to earth. For decades neither group knew of the other's existence until a boy from one group and a girl from the other became friends.

Their elders found out since both live in New York City; the Grays try to shove the Greens off the island until they agree to a truce if the Greens kill Melantha Green who can destroy the city with her mental powers. Innocent bystanders Roger and Caroline Whittier take Melantha to try to hide her when someone from the group hands her to them but she disappears and they don't know which group got her. The Whittiers are determined to save Melantha and their city yet also somehow forge a truce between the opposing camps.

There are many aliens who live among us in science fiction stories such as the Men in Black, but Timothy Zahn has a unique and original way of taking a tribe plot and turning it into a fantastic storyline. This is an action-oriented story where it is almost impossible to figure out the characters' motives and nobody knows who is a friend or an enemy. This makes for a lot of suspense and the onus is on the reader to figure out who is friend or foe. There's a surprise twist at the end of the story that makes THE GREEN AND THE GRAY a very exciting work of speculative fiction.

Harriet Klausner