Aliens, Smith and Jones by Blaine D. Arden

Aliens, Smith and Jones by Blaine D. Arden

Reviewer:  Tj

Publisher:  Storm Moon Press

Novel:  75,000 Words

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Roses:  3

 

Connor Smith works for Primrose, an organization tasked with monitoring and tracking aliens and alien technology. It’s a job that doesn’t know the meaning of “nine-to-five”. It also doesn’t leave much room for a social life, a complication that Connor hasn’t minded, until now. At the prodding of his best friend, Connor reluctantly puts himself back in the dating pool, even though it means lying about his remarkable life.

Elsewhere, Noah Jones has led a remarkable life of his own. Stranded on Earth in 1648, Noah was forced to transform himself permanently into human form to survive. He soon learned that in doing so, he’d become effectively immortal, aging only at a glacial pace. Alone, with no way to contact his people or return home, Noah becomes a silent observer of human civilization—always in the world, but never of the world. Then, hundreds of years later, he sees a face in a crowd and instantly feels a connection that he thought he’d never feel again. But he’s too late: Connor’s already taken.

Destiny is not without a sense of humor, though, and the two men are pulled inexorably closer, snared by the same web of dangers and conspiracies. Worse, Primrose is now aware of Noah, and they aren’t ones to leave an alien unrestrained. So while Connor struggles to understand the strange pull he feels toward Noah, forces without as well as within are working against them to keep them apart.

Excerpt

Our story starts out with Connor Smith out on a mission for Primrose.  Primrose is a very interesting government agency working in England.  Connor and his Best Friend work for Primrose as “Personal Assistants”.  To the world they are PA’s working for a security company but in truth they are working as PA’s for top Lieutenants at Primrose and being field agents.  Connor is a lonely guy whose friend sets him up a lot trying to find him a man.

Noah Jones is an alien that was stranded here on Earth and force to become “human” in order to survive.  Unfortunately, or fortunately, in so doing he made a small error and now ages EXTREMELY slow.  He is missing his home and so lonely for the mental touch of another.  He has only managed this once before and has given up hope of ever feeling it again when he stumbles across Connor Smith and their unlikely connection.

This is a bit of a different spin on the same idea of aliens and government agencys.  Primrose is such a unique idea from most other books dealing with like materials.  I was honestly surprised by the idea of an agency like them.

The story line takes a while to develop the relationship between Smith and Jones so don’t be surprised by this.   As matter of fact Smith has a boyfriend though most of the book.  Jones and Smith are very refined in how they handle this situation as well.

There wasn’t a good build up in the mystery that is involved in the story but the author did throw a surprise toward the end of the story that saddens me.  I had a really hard time rating this book due to that and because some of the medical history doesn’t support Jones’ background.  It really actually fell between 3 and 4 roses for me.  I felt like I had to give it three though because these two elements were fairly big parts to the book.  I do think that if the reader doesn’t know medical history and isn’t into mysteries you could move it up to 4 roses.