Book Review: Gray Apocalypse by James Murdoch

What if Mulder was right on all those episodes of The X-Files? What if there was a huge alien conspiracy using human beings as lab rats? This is the question author James Murdoch explores in his book Gray Apocalypse.

Michael Kendon used to work for the enemy, a grand organization created by a conspiracy between the secret government that really runs the world and the aliens who want to take our world for themselves. Kendon used to be an assassin, plugging "leaks" and solving "problems" that would crop up from time to time when information would seep out about this worldwide cover-up.

Then he met Donald Meller. Meller was part of a movement to stop the members of this "Collaboration" between humans and aliens bent on destroying the world - and then what? Well, honestly we never find out what the aliens are up to beyond kidnapping thousands of people, hiding them in underground bases, and using some of them to breed hybrids to do the aliens' bidding. Yes, they're bad, but what are they really up to?

That's really my biggest problem with Gray Apocalypse. Murdoch creates an interesting problem, but only solves half of it, I think. The aliens want to destroy the world by hitting it with a huge mountain-sized asteroid. Then they can use the humans and hybrids safely tucked away beneath the surface - to do what? Redecorate it to better suit their alien masters' sense of fashion?

Michael eventually joins forces with Laura Meller, Donald's daughter, and the two of them work to smuggle an alien energy source and weapon across the country. Meanwhile, down in Puerto Rico, you have Eric Tepler, an astronomer, and his love interest, Gabriela Estrada, a high school teacher in Cabo Rojo, working to figure out how to stop an asteroid from hitting the earth. Between Michael, Laura, Eric, and Gabriela, they manage to gather the forces and resources to stop the alien collaborators from destroying our planet.

I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy this novel. I did find myself rooting for the good guys and hoping that the aliens didn't win. But the story had one big hole you could probably drive a truck through (or in this case, a huge asteroid). I never got a satisfactory answer about why the aliens were here in the first place or why they wanted to destroy most of the life on the planet.

Article Author: Fitz

Brian Fitzpatrick (aka "Fitz") is a software engineer and writer living in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with his wife, two daughters, two dogs, a cat, and two rats (new for Xmas 2010!) -- trying desperately to survive the chaos!

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