Book Review: The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette

I've read and watched so much science fiction, that I sometimes find myself getting bored with the genre. It's always nice to find a fresh take on an old troupe.

The Spaceship Next Door is a science fiction dry comedy about first contact with aliens written by Gene Doucette. It's available as an eBook, audiobook, and those paper things your grandparents used to read.

Overview

A spaceship lands in a small town and does nothing for years while the army and several conspiracy theorists camp around it studying it. Then one day everything changes.

The Good

Approach. This story is about aliens landing on Earth for the first time. That's a premise I've seen hundreds of times, but the author found a unique approach that was different enough to be interesting and not feel repetitive.

Voice. The story has a very strong voice that adds to the mood and feel and point of view of the story.

The Bad

Characters. The characters were really dull and uninteresting. The author did a competent job of developing them, so that wasn't the problem. They just weren't that interesting.

Pacing. The book moves very slowly with an even pace. Most of the book is spent with the characters wondering what is going on with little revealed until the end. By then the reader just doesn't care anymore.

What I Would Like to Have Seen

I wish the story had more to it: more interesting characters, more twists in the plot, more original ideas. While the overall idea was something I hadn't read yet, it wasn't a strong enough idea to be the sole strong point.

Overall

The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette offers a new spin to the First Contact Troupe of science fiction and has a great, quaint voice with lots of dry humor. Unfortunately, the characters are uninteresting, the pace slow, and the overall plot kind of boring. I give it 3 out of 5 eReaders.