What do you think?
Rate this book
The 22 Day Invasion: The Specturian Chronicles - Book One
It’s been raining for five days and there’s no end in sight. When Andria Erickson wakes on the fifth day she finds out it’s like this all over the world and people are finally starting to pay attention. Storms are brewing off of every coast, natural disasters are becoming the norm, and that’s the least of everyone’s problems.
This is the story of a group of friends banding together to outrun a vicious weather pattern with no escape plan and no idea how to survive. Learning they must rely on each other, they test the bonds of their friendship and their love to get through the coming storm.
This is an adult novel geared towards readers who enjoy a little romance with their science fiction. Strong sexual content, alternative female/female sex, and some strong language.
This is the story of a group of friends banding together to outrun a vicious weather pattern with no escape plan and no idea how to survive. Learning they must rely on each other, they test the bonds of their friendship and their love to get through the coming storm.
This is an adult novel geared towards readers who enjoy a little romance with their science fiction. Strong sexual content, alternative female/female sex, and some strong language.
229 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 26, 2018
2 people are currently reading
2 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 17, 2018
This book has a dissonance problem.
On the one hand, it is a romance; a slightly awkward romance, where a young lady (Andria) has to choose between her current (male) beau and her intensely passionate (female) ex. Complicating things, Andria's ex is her best friend's sister. After one too many flaming breakups, the sister makes them promise to never speak to each other again - and this they duly have.
On the other hand is the apocalypse. And it genuinely is the end for humanity; rain suddenly blankets every country on the planet. Then the rain turns orange, and the birds start dying. Aliens, unknowable and unstoppable, are invading, and their harbingers are horrifying.
So far, so good really; the tension between a small group of survivors, running from the rising waters of the coast and hiding from the terror of the sky. Then the personal drama of a classic love triangle. That can work, and has worked well in the past.
So I guess the problem is the twist. Andria chooses her ex. Her boyfriend gracefully withdraws. And then it turns out the ex and her sister are both aliens. Yes, the same aliens that are wrecking a swathe of destruction across the global, killing literally billions of people in graphic ways. I really mean graphic; the book describes how the aliens send down rain snakes that literally tear apart a reporter on live TV, slowly enough that her screams last minutes before being cut off. These snakes infect wounds, causing agony, gestating before boiling out of people and into the next host. The rain burns people, kills birds so quickly they rain from the sky, and seeps into the soil. Even a small dose of the final poison will rot you from the inside out.
But yes, Andria being the soulmate of one of the aliens is presented as a good thing. The disconnect really shocked me. Tatum (the ex) is really excited because finding your soulmate is the only way these aliens can produce a male child, and the rarity of it means their population is dwindling. Hitting pause here; the fuck? You're casually exterminating a whole planet's worth of species', one (humanity) of which is demonstrably capable of being a rare important soulmate thing , and you just wipe them out anyway? There is a reason these aliens are on the way out.
But pushing play again; the extermination and the romance take place at the same time. So scenes of abject horror - including stuff visited on the gang of survivors we've been chilling with the entire book - play out while Andria just goes with the romance of it all. She makes some token "wait, perhaps you shouldn't exterminate my entire population" but some budget explanation and she's cool with it. Whoa, this strained my ability to believe; either the aliens did some magic on her or this is a cold-hearted bitch, and she wasn't presented that way at all.
The explanation for why the aliens are killing almost everything on the planet is stupid, by the way. They want the earth to last longer, for some reason. Humanity is destroying it. So far, so good I guess. But a) what the fuck gives them the right to decide that earth should last longer? They just peace in, decide they know better, and murder 9 billion sentient people, and god only knows how many animals. That is disgusting. Oh, but wait; they plan to leave about 80 million people alive. This is also stupid; they don't leave a population centre intact, with services and, you know, social order. It is more of a "spray bugspray into an anthill and 1% survive," kind of deal. Somehow I doubt this approached would usher in an age of enlightenment and ecologically friendly living; Mad Max comes to mind, strongly.
You really need to hand it to them for raw, arrogant sociopathy however, because it turns out they have a kind of replicator technology. Yeah, something that could sustainably free everyone from want and capitalism in an environmentally friendly way. If they had come down, explained themselves, and asked for volunteers to go to Mars/Eros I reckon they could have solved the overpopulation problem without the complete destruction of unique cultures, lives, and constellations of societies. So they fucked up the earth and all living creatures on it because... I don't even know. And again, humans are capable of being their soulmates, which they have been struggling to find, to the point where they are going extinct.
The implications of the invasion make the romance feel... really weird, really uncomfortable, profoundly strange. And not in a way that makes you think that feeling is intentional.
I have given this book three stars, because I don't know what to think. It could have been a good romance. It could have been a good alien invasion survival story. Together the book is a mixed bag of things, none of which sit easily next to another.
Do I recommend it? I am not sure?
EDIT: wait a second... regarding the whole "aliens only have male children with their soulmate thing"... who cares? The two female soulmates are apparently capable of producing a male. So if soulmates can produce both male and female regardless of the sexual organs of the two of them, and males can only have female children without their soulmate, that makes male children totally irrelevant. Only soulmates matter in the scheme of things. This book did not think that through.
On the one hand, it is a romance; a slightly awkward romance, where a young lady (Andria) has to choose between her current (male) beau and her intensely passionate (female) ex. Complicating things, Andria's ex is her best friend's sister. After one too many flaming breakups, the sister makes them promise to never speak to each other again - and this they duly have.
On the other hand is the apocalypse. And it genuinely is the end for humanity; rain suddenly blankets every country on the planet. Then the rain turns orange, and the birds start dying. Aliens, unknowable and unstoppable, are invading, and their harbingers are horrifying.
So far, so good really; the tension between a small group of survivors, running from the rising waters of the coast and hiding from the terror of the sky. Then the personal drama of a classic love triangle. That can work, and has worked well in the past.
So I guess the problem is the twist. Andria chooses her ex. Her boyfriend gracefully withdraws. And then it turns out the ex and her sister are both aliens. Yes, the same aliens that are wrecking a swathe of destruction across the global, killing literally billions of people in graphic ways. I really mean graphic; the book describes how the aliens send down rain snakes that literally tear apart a reporter on live TV, slowly enough that her screams last minutes before being cut off. These snakes infect wounds, causing agony, gestating before boiling out of people and into the next host. The rain burns people, kills birds so quickly they rain from the sky, and seeps into the soil. Even a small dose of the final poison will rot you from the inside out.
But yes, Andria being the soulmate of one of the aliens is presented as a good thing. The disconnect really shocked me. Tatum (the ex) is really excited because finding your soulmate is the only way these aliens can produce a male child, and the rarity of it means their population is dwindling. Hitting pause here; the fuck? You're casually exterminating a whole planet's worth of species', one (humanity) of which is demonstrably capable of being a rare important soulmate thing , and you just wipe them out anyway? There is a reason these aliens are on the way out.
But pushing play again; the extermination and the romance take place at the same time. So scenes of abject horror - including stuff visited on the gang of survivors we've been chilling with the entire book - play out while Andria just goes with the romance of it all. She makes some token "wait, perhaps you shouldn't exterminate my entire population" but some budget explanation and she's cool with it. Whoa, this strained my ability to believe; either the aliens did some magic on her or this is a cold-hearted bitch, and she wasn't presented that way at all.
The explanation for why the aliens are killing almost everything on the planet is stupid, by the way. They want the earth to last longer, for some reason. Humanity is destroying it. So far, so good I guess. But a) what the fuck gives them the right to decide that earth should last longer? They just peace in, decide they know better, and murder 9 billion sentient people, and god only knows how many animals. That is disgusting. Oh, but wait; they plan to leave about 80 million people alive. This is also stupid; they don't leave a population centre intact, with services and, you know, social order. It is more of a "spray bugspray into an anthill and 1% survive," kind of deal. Somehow I doubt this approached would usher in an age of enlightenment and ecologically friendly living; Mad Max comes to mind, strongly.
You really need to hand it to them for raw, arrogant sociopathy however, because it turns out they have a kind of replicator technology. Yeah, something that could sustainably free everyone from want and capitalism in an environmentally friendly way. If they had come down, explained themselves, and asked for volunteers to go to Mars/Eros I reckon they could have solved the overpopulation problem without the complete destruction of unique cultures, lives, and constellations of societies. So they fucked up the earth and all living creatures on it because... I don't even know. And again, humans are capable of being their soulmates, which they have been struggling to find, to the point where they are going extinct.
The implications of the invasion make the romance feel... really weird, really uncomfortable, profoundly strange. And not in a way that makes you think that feeling is intentional.
I have given this book three stars, because I don't know what to think. It could have been a good romance. It could have been a good alien invasion survival story. Together the book is a mixed bag of things, none of which sit easily next to another.
Do I recommend it? I am not sure?
EDIT: wait a second... regarding the whole "aliens only have male children with their soulmate thing"... who cares? The two female soulmates are apparently capable of producing a male. So if soulmates can produce both male and female regardless of the sexual organs of the two of them, and males can only have female children without their soulmate, that makes male children totally irrelevant. Only soulmates matter in the scheme of things. This book did not think that through.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
November 5, 2018This starts out with an explicit MF sex scene between the MC and her boyfriend... and that’s where it ended for me.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews