A Guest Post by Jim Morris
The most important thing to know about this book is that it’s fun. It is, in fact the most fun I’ve had reading a book in a long time. Other books have perhaps explored more profound emotions but if you want to spend a few hours alternating between a grin, a rolling chuckle, and laughing out loud you probably won’t do better with anything contemporary.
What we have here is the memoir of a screaming nutjob, as told to author Michael A. Armstrong. The nutjob in question, James Ignatius Malachi Obediah Osborn is a multiple alien abductee, fierce fighter in the Resistance movement against the Alien Occupying Government. He can spot ‘em among the general population, because he knows their disguise tricks. Or maybe he’s just nuts, hard to say.
That’s where a lot of the tension in the story comes from. Some of what he believes is pretty convincing. Some of it just seems Loony Tunes.
After a scary encounter with the grays in Florida Jimmo heads for Alaska where the adventure continues. Aside from maybe being nuts Jimmo is a pretty competent fellow who can find work and do it well, fighting fires while fending off alien attacks.
He purports to be a spec ops veteran of Desert Storm, although while others were defeating Saddam he was further out in the desert, hunting grays with Delta Force. Thing is, he still talks the talk right. The guy has definitely been somewhere and done something.
Another thing this books does well is present the society of adventurous spirits who have absconded to Alaska as the last frontier where you can get a decent latte. A more brave and gaudy collection of tatted, pierced and bizarrely coifed expats can hardly be imagined. And, to paraphrase Ronnie Hawkins, Jimmo gets more trim than Frank Sinatra.
Warning: if you have a problem with people who unabashedly talk nasty, well, maybe you should read Jane Austen instead.
Michael A. Armstrong was born in Virginia, raised in Florida, and has lived in Alaska since 1979. He graduated from New College of Florida, and received a master of fine arts in writing from the University of Alaska Anchorage; his master’s thesis, PRAK, was published by Warner Books/Questar as After the Zap. Armstrong has published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov’s, and Analog, as well as numerous anthologies. A writer in the Janet Morris Heroes In Hell series, he most recently was published in Lawyers in Hell.
He now lives in Homer, Alaska.
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