Whitney Schreiber, The Grays

The Grays

Whitney Schreiber

Tor, August 2006, $24.95

ISBN: 0765313898

In 1977 teenage Madison, Wisconsin residents Danny Callaghan meets Katelyn Burns, but neither know where they are. Not long afterward, both are returned naked near their homes. They later "meet", marry, move to Bell in the Midwest and raise a son Connor, a certified genius.

In Colorado, Lauren Glass learns that her late father actually communicated with Adam the surviving Roswell alien who killed him with a scratch. Apparently these alien "Grays" have lived amidst their human hosts using genetic engineering on selected people in an effort to save their dying species. She has been selected to replace her dad as the empath with the aliens. As the Grays become bolder and more out in the open, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Wilkes, who monitors Gray activity, believes they and their quisling human puppets are betraying mankind; he begins a search and destroy mission to save the world from these "welcome" invaders and their "offspring". Confrontation is coming to Indiana where a nine year old boy is the focus of a three way tug of war; the Grays, the xenophobic military, and Connor's loving parents.

This is a terrific alien abduction science fiction thriller (what else would one expect from Whitney Schreiber) in which the military operations are haunting, but the abduction scenes feel very genuine (even to this queen of skeptics). The action-packed storyline grips the audience from the first moment that Danny and Katelyn meet, and it never slows down until the final confrontation. The storyline is fast-paced, and readers will be hard pressed to put it down, as fans will wonder what the Grays hope to achieve, and just what DNA makes up Connor.