NEW SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY REVIEWS
Reviews Of Recently Published Science Fiction And Fantasy Books
Reviewer: Forrest Schultz schultz_forrest@yahoo.com 770-583-3258
Blog Address: http://newsciencefictionandfantasyreviews.blogspot.com
October 13, 2012
Teens Fight The Space Aliens Among Us With Unusual Weapons
A Review of
James Cambas Among Us,Volume I (Create Space, 2012)
306 pp $12.95 ISBN-10: 1470187434 ISBN-13: 978-1470187439
Reviewer: Forrest Schultz
In 2010 James Cambas joined the burgeoning Coweta book writing/publishing scene when he co-authored with Joe Dwyer a science fiction novel titled Shubian's Rift. Recently he published another science fiction book, Among Us,Volume I, which he wrote as sole author. Since its main characters are teens, libraries will probably catalogue it as "Young Adult" according to today's definition, which means "teenager".
The story falls into the sub-genre of space aliens coming to Earth to conquer it by taking over the bodies of humans. Although there is a lot of humor in the story, esp. of the kind typical of contemporary teens, the story is serious SF, not a satire on SF. We quickly find out, as the rear jacket tells us, that normal weapons like guns cannot usually be used in attacking the aliens because they usually are operating a gizmo which melts metals. However, they can be attacked with baseball bats and arrows, and sometimes the damage done by the aliens to the humans can be undone by the usage of special extra-terrestrial cubes, which are shown on the front cover of the book.
The title refers to the situation in which it is difficult to arouse most people to battle because the aliens are not seen arriving in space ships because they have surreptitiously landed and are now here in a non-obvious way "among us". And the humans whose bodies they take over still look like ordinary people. So the planned conquest is not open and blatant but subtle, making it much more difficult to fight against them.
Since we do not know what space aliens are really like or even if there are any, it is always difficult to analyze a space alien story. Some of what is portrayed here, as is the case in other space alien invasion stories, may sound unrealistic, but until we can compare it to a KNOWN alien, we cannot be sure what is realistic and what isn't. You will need to read it and decide for yourself. One thing that is certain, though, and that is that there is a lot of action in this fast-paced story and a call to battle beings superior to us in technology who must be defeated if humans are to retain their freedom.
Three more volumes of this series are planned. Information is available on this new website http://www.amongus2012.com/.
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