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Cottonwood
They never meant to come to Earth. They were never allowed to leave...Welcome to “You should have heard it, Kate. It was subtle, but it wasn’t my imagination. The guy spent five hours essentially telling us that the aliens are retarded.”“Oh come on.”“Not in so many words, but—hang on.” Sarah moved the paz to her other hand so that she could lay her right arm over Fagin’s back, since he was being insistent about it. “But he just really drilled it in,” she continued, resigned. “Over and over, really soft and gentle. ‘They’re not smart, they don’t take care of themselves, they need to be controlled.’”Kate’s tiny image on the screen flickered as she shifted her own paz and had trouble restabilizing. The two weren’t exactly compatible anymore. She really needed to get a new one. “So? Maybe they do.”“And maybe they don’t. Kate!” she said, trying to laugh through her frustration. “These people came to us in a spaceship! A planet full of stupid layabouts does not master intergalactic space travel!”Kate’s image flickered again and snapped to black. She didn’t need it. She could hear the distraction in Kate’s voice, and the tight I’m-pretending-I’m-not-angry tone that had been her default setting pretty much since Sarah told her she was really moving to Cottonwood. “Okay, so the guy who’s been studying them for twenty years is wrong and Sarah Fowler, who hasn’t even met one yet, is right. Congratulations. You’re that good.”Sarah felt herself blush. “It didn’t sound right, that’s all I’m saying. Some of the little things he said just...just really got to me.”“Like what?” Kate asked, sounding concerned now and not big-sister patronizing.“Like…Like he said that if their claspers came off, they’d die.”A short pause. “What are claspers?”“Oh, that’s not the point, they’re like tiny little extra arms that smell things. The point is, how many aliens had to lose their claspers and die without having any other…What’s the word I want? Variables?”Kate was quiet for a while. The picture tried to come back a few times, showing Sarah glimpses of her sister through a haze of multi-colored distortion. “These guys are professionals, Sarah. It’s their job to make connections that people like us miss.”“Yeah, but how did so many aliens lose their claspers in the first place, that’s what I really want to—”“Did your house come with a phone?”“Huh? Um, yeah.” She twisted to look up at it, clinging to the wall like a shiny, black beetle. “But it’s patched into the IBI switchboard. I can’t figure out how to get a line outside the village. I could look it up in the manual, but—” She laughed. “—I’m kind of manualed-out. I had to set everything, you have no idea. All the faucets are TruTouch. Who the heck even knows off-hand how many degrees they like their shower? Or their drinking water? Plus, I got my Fahrenheit and my Celsius screwed up and practically steamed-cooked my face off the first time I…Why?” She checked the paz’s signal, but it looked good. “Can’t you hear me okay?”“I hear you. I was just curious. So this is your own paz?”“Yeah,” said Sarah, still trying to see where this was going. “But they scanned it in through the company server when I got here. You know. So I can’t take pictures or blog about company policy or stuff. They said it wouldn’t affect my performance. I mean, I can barely see you, but—”“That’s normal for the fossil you’re using,” Kate agreed. In a new, hearty voice, she added, “TruTouch faucets, those are awesome!”
327 pages, Paperback
First published February 28, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 498 reviews
April 14, 2023
Only this author could make me want to read an inter-species romance between a human woman and an alien man with an ant-like body. And absolutely love it. This book is just as great as my other two favorites from this author, The Last Hour of Gann and Land of the Beautiful Dead.
April 30, 2013
To compare this to the cockroach-from-space District 9 movie doesn't begin to do it justice. But that's a great movie, so it's a start.
This romantic sci-fier is a beautifully-crafted apartheid story, depicting the segregation of aliens and humans on Earth. There are some political and didactic undertones, but it doesn't condescend you. Nor does it choose sides. Instead, it leaves you profoundly moved, shocked, out of breath, and whip-lashed in a collision of human pride and shame.
Few books can rival this story's narrative spirit, sexual audacity (human/alien copulation), and depravity of villains. RLS forcefully shoves you into the concentration camps with these oppressed other-worldly characters and rips your heart from your chest as you see them as men and women and children, and not as extraterrestrial creatures. You live alongside them, sharing their dreams, friendships, humor, fears, brutality, starvation, and death.
The sci-fi elements are very soft, doesn't bury you in the nuts and bolts of speculative science and world-building. In fact, this is the fastest pace RLS script I've read to date.
The romance is not an overarching focal point, but this love story is more powerful than the majority of high-maintenance, non-communicative, self-absorbed relationships crowding today's romance genre. In a drama that is full of grief and suspense, the smallest moments between this H/h--her fingertips beneath the plates of his outer shell, their shared breath, their simple declarations (I am you and you are me)--bring the atrocities of their hardships into painful focus. Their sexual mating may be considered perverse by mainstream standards, but the mechanics are insignificant in lieu of the poignant, soul-deep connection between them.
Look as hard as you can, you won't find any flaws in this story. Yes, it's harrowing and weird and speculative. But the MCs are the paragon of heroism, the ending is uplifting, and the plot elements are brilliant down to the smallest detail. When finished, you might struggle to pick up another book right away, knowing that absolutely nothing will compare.
If you haven't read anything by RLS, this book is an amazing discovery of this author's artistry. It will hold your interest through every hard-to-read page. I was actually pained when I reached the end. I found myself flipping forward, chanting, "No, no, no." Not because the ending wasn't satisfying. The contrary. I was so embedded in the story, I had no desire to emerge. No doubt this will be the best book I read this year, as it has certainly joined my beloved shelf of all-time favorites.
This romantic sci-fier is a beautifully-crafted apartheid story, depicting the segregation of aliens and humans on Earth. There are some political and didactic undertones, but it doesn't condescend you. Nor does it choose sides. Instead, it leaves you profoundly moved, shocked, out of breath, and whip-lashed in a collision of human pride and shame.
Few books can rival this story's narrative spirit, sexual audacity (human/alien copulation), and depravity of villains. RLS forcefully shoves you into the concentration camps with these oppressed other-worldly characters and rips your heart from your chest as you see them as men and women and children, and not as extraterrestrial creatures. You live alongside them, sharing their dreams, friendships, humor, fears, brutality, starvation, and death.
The sci-fi elements are very soft, doesn't bury you in the nuts and bolts of speculative science and world-building. In fact, this is the fastest pace RLS script I've read to date.
The romance is not an overarching focal point, but this love story is more powerful than the majority of high-maintenance, non-communicative, self-absorbed relationships crowding today's romance genre. In a drama that is full of grief and suspense, the smallest moments between this H/h--her fingertips beneath the plates of his outer shell, their shared breath, their simple declarations (I am you and you are me)--bring the atrocities of their hardships into painful focus. Their sexual mating may be considered perverse by mainstream standards, but the mechanics are insignificant in lieu of the poignant, soul-deep connection between them.
Look as hard as you can, you won't find any flaws in this story. Yes, it's harrowing and weird and speculative. But the MCs are the paragon of heroism, the ending is uplifting, and the plot elements are brilliant down to the smallest detail. When finished, you might struggle to pick up another book right away, knowing that absolutely nothing will compare.
If you haven't read anything by RLS, this book is an amazing discovery of this author's artistry. It will hold your interest through every hard-to-read page. I was actually pained when I reached the end. I found myself flipping forward, chanting, "No, no, no." Not because the ending wasn't satisfying. The contrary. I was so embedded in the story, I had no desire to emerge. No doubt this will be the best book I read this year, as it has certainly joined my beloved shelf of all-time favorites.
March 24, 2020
"Please, I just want to go home!"
The bug appearance is the least sympathetic the aliens could ever have. Think of the “starship troopers”, the most famous military science fiction action films. There, “The Bugs” are an extraterrestrial race that wants to kill the brave soldiers, to eat their brains and to conquer Earth.
Nobody likes cockroaches and insect-like creatures. They are the nightmares for many people including me.
So the author challenged her readers. Could she make these weird looking aliens lovable, sympathetic, sensitive, fighters who are trying to survive in a hostile environment?
Her aliens are tall (7 feet approximately), humanoids, their outer shell is hard and they look like bugs. They can even reproduce with egg farms.
20 years ago their spaceship crashed on Earth and because they were ugly for the human standards, everybody thought that they were hostile or stupid or both.
It was the perfect opportunity for some evil men to steal their technology and take advantage of them.
So they put them in camps all over the worlds that looked like favelas in Brazil and smelled like rubbish dumps in India. Because the aliens were like cockroaches and cockroaches must (NEED TO) be surrounded by garbage.
I suppose the new established refugee camps in Europe will be a close approximation very soon, if people keep being packed there continuously.
Author wins her bet. The aliens won’t just be tolerable. They will be likable.
The main male alien character Sanford (or Nk’os’a’knko really) is a hero, a military man, an inventor who has been waiting 20 years until he is ready to escape and bring help. He is also an affectionate father and a true gentleman.
The little alien boy, Sanford’s son, named T’aki is adorable, cute and clever. He has never seen his planet. His home, his whole world is Cottonwood. A whole generation of young aliens actually has been born, grown up, learn to live in garbage and they have never seen their true home. Children of a lesser God.
The main female human character, Sarah, might look a bit naïve, but she is destined to do great things. She will be the catalyst in order things to be changed.
The two main characters’ relationship will be sweet and kind. They will learn to love each other and please each other. And they will naturally fall in love – although Sarah will never see it coming.
The secondary alien characters will be mostly appealing: John Byrnes, Hancock, Levin, Good Samaritan, Che Baccus etc.
(Their names are basically nasty little jokes, given by the humans who could not pronounce the aliens’ true names. Another way to degrade the poor aliens)
The rest of the humans will be unfortunately bad or aloof or clueless.
But some (just a few) humans will be truly interested in the aliens’ well being and misery. Some of their stories are incredible and may bring you a few tears to your eyes.
Concluding I just need to add that maybe this book appears to be Sci-Fi, but it is deeply a political statement with hidden ethical messages.
The bug appearance is the least sympathetic the aliens could ever have. Think of the “starship troopers”, the most famous military science fiction action films. There, “The Bugs” are an extraterrestrial race that wants to kill the brave soldiers, to eat their brains and to conquer Earth.
Nobody likes cockroaches and insect-like creatures. They are the nightmares for many people including me.
So the author challenged her readers. Could she make these weird looking aliens lovable, sympathetic, sensitive, fighters who are trying to survive in a hostile environment?
Her aliens are tall (7 feet approximately), humanoids, their outer shell is hard and they look like bugs. They can even reproduce with egg farms.
20 years ago their spaceship crashed on Earth and because they were ugly for the human standards, everybody thought that they were hostile or stupid or both.
It was the perfect opportunity for some evil men to steal their technology and take advantage of them.
So they put them in camps all over the worlds that looked like favelas in Brazil and smelled like rubbish dumps in India. Because the aliens were like cockroaches and cockroaches must (NEED TO) be surrounded by garbage.
I suppose the new established refugee camps in Europe will be a close approximation very soon, if people keep being packed there continuously.
Author wins her bet. The aliens won’t just be tolerable. They will be likable.
The main male alien character Sanford (or Nk’os’a’knko really) is a hero, a military man, an inventor who has been waiting 20 years until he is ready to escape and bring help. He is also an affectionate father and a true gentleman.
The little alien boy, Sanford’s son, named T’aki is adorable, cute and clever. He has never seen his planet. His home, his whole world is Cottonwood. A whole generation of young aliens actually has been born, grown up, learn to live in garbage and they have never seen their true home. Children of a lesser God.
The main female human character, Sarah, might look a bit naïve, but she is destined to do great things. She will be the catalyst in order things to be changed.
The two main characters’ relationship will be sweet and kind. They will learn to love each other and please each other. And they will naturally fall in love – although Sarah will never see it coming.
The secondary alien characters will be mostly appealing: John Byrnes, Hancock, Levin, Good Samaritan, Che Baccus etc.
(Their names are basically nasty little jokes, given by the humans who could not pronounce the aliens’ true names. Another way to degrade the poor aliens)
The rest of the humans will be unfortunately bad or aloof or clueless.
But some (just a few) humans will be truly interested in the aliens’ well being and misery. Some of their stories are incredible and may bring you a few tears to your eyes.
Concluding I just need to add that maybe this book appears to be Sci-Fi, but it is deeply a political statement with hidden ethical messages.
April 13, 2014
10* if that were possible!
This is, once again, no ifs, no buts, one of the best books I've read this year. Smith already did that to me with Heat, and she does it again with Cottonwood.
There's little sense in going into detail about the content of this book, because I'd be here tomorrow, Smith writes as satisfying door-stoppers as Stephen King and Ken Follett. I'm usually a slow reader, but when it comes to her I find myself entirely incapable of ceasing to read, only sleep stopping me. And she offers such huge and satisfying chunks!
This is, much like Heat, a dark story, with strong erotic elements, with an ultimately heartening lovestory (and yes, there is a HEA), but also with horrors, depravities and tortures which take the breath away. What some authors aspire to do, Smith does with silly ease. And I mean that, there is an image of a torture in this book, which left me gasping for air and which will most likely replay in a nightmare. There are descriptions of torture and pain in there, beside which those of many, even well-known horror authors pale into insignificance. Smith is, with ease, up there with the very, very best.
In consequence a warning: seriously NOT for the faint-hearted. Particularly because Smith will, whether you want that or not, engage your emotions and force you to ache along with the victims, and also--which is probably worse--understand (and empathise with) the perpetrators.
ETA:
Re-read this as a palate cleaner and damn is it good, even on the second round. This is such a rich tapestry and I noticed so much more this time. Green with envy.
This is, once again, no ifs, no buts, one of the best books I've read this year. Smith already did that to me with Heat, and she does it again with Cottonwood.
There's little sense in going into detail about the content of this book, because I'd be here tomorrow, Smith writes as satisfying door-stoppers as Stephen King and Ken Follett. I'm usually a slow reader, but when it comes to her I find myself entirely incapable of ceasing to read, only sleep stopping me. And she offers such huge and satisfying chunks!
This is, much like Heat, a dark story, with strong erotic elements, with an ultimately heartening lovestory (and yes, there is a HEA), but also with horrors, depravities and tortures which take the breath away. What some authors aspire to do, Smith does with silly ease. And I mean that, there is an image of a torture in this book, which left me gasping for air and which will most likely replay in a nightmare. There are descriptions of torture and pain in there, beside which those of many, even well-known horror authors pale into insignificance. Smith is, with ease, up there with the very, very best.
In consequence a warning: seriously NOT for the faint-hearted. Particularly because Smith will, whether you want that or not, engage your emotions and force you to ache along with the victims, and also--which is probably worse--understand (and empathise with) the perpetrators.
ETA:
Re-read this as a palate cleaner and damn is it good, even on the second round. This is such a rich tapestry and I noticed so much more this time. Green with envy.
December 10, 2020
5 stars
Finally - I am rating this 5 - it gutted me in parts emotionally and I am still thinking about it. Books don't usually affect me like this - but it was done well. It drew me in and I definitely became emotionally involved.
The h, Sarah, evolved into a person of such conviction, sense of right and action to make things happen. She was always a fairly decent person - but drifting through life.
I have DL'd all KU R Lee Smith books and my GR buddy Cc advised me on the order to read. I think she is preparing me:)
Reading R Lee Smith is not for the faint of heart. Triggers abound. I'm reading a couple of lighter books between this and the next on the list.
Finally - I am rating this 5 - it gutted me in parts emotionally and I am still thinking about it. Books don't usually affect me like this - but it was done well. It drew me in and I definitely became emotionally involved.
The h, Sarah, evolved into a person of such conviction, sense of right and action to make things happen. She was always a fairly decent person - but drifting through life.
I have DL'd all KU R Lee Smith books and my GR buddy Cc advised me on the order to read. I think she is preparing me:)
Reading R Lee Smith is not for the faint of heart. Triggers abound. I'm reading a couple of lighter books between this and the next on the list.
January 21, 2014
4.5 Out of this World Stars
Someone please tell me how an author can make you fall in love with a character who pretty much looks like this?
I'd really like to know? I thought I was in trouble when I loved the aliens from Heat, at least they had some human qualities. Then I fell in love with Lizardman in The Last Hour of Gann. How, how do you fall in love with a lizardman?
That's nothing because now I have fallen for 'bugs', and after reading the book I hate to call them 'bugs' because I feel like it is such a derogatory thing to call them that. I think that is one of the reasons I love Smith's books. Because the lessons you are taking from these books are things that apply to real life situations.
I loved this story. I loved getting to know the characters, even the hateful one. Every detail was important to the story. I, like Sarah, especially fell in love with T'aki. You just want to bundle that cute little kid up and keep him safe. Sanford...I don't even know what to say about Sanford. He made me all giddy and excited every time I was back to reading about him. And Sarah, it amazes me that Smith writes such strong heroine characters in every book, I love that!! We never get the "whoa-is-me" female. Samson, another great character, who behind his rough exterior was an amazing being.
Twenty years ago they came to earth, they had no intention of coming here, they had no intention of hurting anyone. They just wanted to fix their ship and head back on their journey. Then earth decides they need to be placed in camps to prepare them to be integrated with the human race. Ha!!
If you have ever read and enjoyed a Smith book then I think you'll enjoy this one as well. I'll admit this certainly wasn't what I expected but ended up being better.
And to all my friends out there who think I'm crazy when I read this stuff and start telling you I fell in love with another alien, Well Aliens need loving too, not just those motorcycle riding, tattoo wearing, body piercing, rocker bad boys! LOL ;-)
Someone please tell me how an author can make you fall in love with a character who pretty much looks like this?
I'd really like to know? I thought I was in trouble when I loved the aliens from Heat, at least they had some human qualities. Then I fell in love with Lizardman in The Last Hour of Gann. How, how do you fall in love with a lizardman?
That's nothing because now I have fallen for 'bugs', and after reading the book I hate to call them 'bugs' because I feel like it is such a derogatory thing to call them that. I think that is one of the reasons I love Smith's books. Because the lessons you are taking from these books are things that apply to real life situations.
I loved this story. I loved getting to know the characters, even the hateful one. Every detail was important to the story. I, like Sarah, especially fell in love with T'aki. You just want to bundle that cute little kid up and keep him safe. Sanford...I don't even know what to say about Sanford. He made me all giddy and excited every time I was back to reading about him. And Sarah, it amazes me that Smith writes such strong heroine characters in every book, I love that!! We never get the "whoa-is-me" female. Samson, another great character, who behind his rough exterior was an amazing being.
Twenty years ago they came to earth, they had no intention of coming here, they had no intention of hurting anyone. They just wanted to fix their ship and head back on their journey. Then earth decides they need to be placed in camps to prepare them to be integrated with the human race. Ha!!
If you have ever read and enjoyed a Smith book then I think you'll enjoy this one as well. I'll admit this certainly wasn't what I expected but ended up being better.
And to all my friends out there who think I'm crazy when I read this stuff and start telling you I fell in love with another alien, Well Aliens need loving too, not just those motorcycle riding, tattoo wearing, body piercing, rocker bad boys! LOL ;-)
Read
March 24, 2015DNF at 72%.
I owe an explanation why this highly praised by many GR readers book didn't cause the same reaction by me.
The writing:
The book is easier to read, R.Lee Smith has an uncomplicated and fluent writing style.
I name this writing style a descriptive style: you have an exact picture of the telling in your head, but don't try to find a lot of brilliant expressions or a lot of beautiful lines.
This writing style helps you in creation images, but won't expand your quote's collection. And I'm a quote's junkie.
The main female character:
Sarah Fowler. It was difficult to like her. For me.
Her altruism and her genuine willingness to help was supposed to make her very strong and adorable. For me it was on the border of an eye-roll. The further the more. I am surprised how she managed to survive everything that happened to her, her bones and her stamina might have been of an extraterrestrial genealogy.
The plot:
At the beginning very similar to District 9. At the end of the book the author writes that it was a coincidence. I am not going to judge her. We read over and over again the same story told in a bit difference nuances from the different writers and get used to it. That was not my problem. My problem was a very depressing spirit of the story. I made only 72% and everything you can read up to this mark was how these poor aliens were humiliated, abused, decremented and brutally murdered. And Sarah was the only person on the Earth who tried with her very modest capabilities to save the unbearable living conditions in the immigration camps.
The romance itself:
In spite of a good character of Sanford, I was not able to imagine to fall in love with him. There were a lot of unpleasant descriptions as of the aliens anatomy as well their sexuality that didn't have an aphrodisiac effect on me.(Sorry, I can't help myself - I don't like insects!!!)
I was struggling through the story and was about to give up more than once, but finally after the first sex scene between Sarah and Sanford, I decided to stop reading it.
I know it was not supposed to arouse me, but it was for my taste pretty disgustingly.
My final thoughts:
As a passionate mm-reader I ask myself, could it be that if the main character was not Sarah but Steven I would enjoy the story? The answer is NO. It wouldn't change my feeling for bug-aliens and it wouldn't change the plot. So...this book was not for me.
December 31, 2014
Welp, so my last read of 2014 was my best read of 2014.
Steel and Maygirl, THANK YOU SO MUCH for telling me to read this.
It was so difficult to make myself sit through how awful humans are, but from 25% I literally could not tear my eyes away from the book. The end was SO PERFECT!!! OMG!!. I needed the entire ending 15% to make up for the horrors of the first 33%, but it was WORTH IT.
Holy Hell. I need more of this crack.
Steel and Maygirl, THANK YOU SO MUCH for telling me to read this.
It was so difficult to make myself sit through how awful humans are, but from 25% I literally could not tear my eyes away from the book. The end was SO PERFECT!!! OMG!!. I needed the entire ending 15% to make up for the horrors of the first 33%, but it was WORTH IT.
Holy Hell. I need more of this crack.
![Profile Image for Michelle [Helen Geek].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1448463806i%2F5557851._CR0%2C13%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
November 28, 2013
11/27/2013 --
Overall Rating = 5 Amazing Stars
Book Cover / Book Blurb / Book Title = 2 / 4 / 5 = 3 Stars
Writer’s Voice = 5 Stars
Character Development = 5 Stars
Story Appreciation = 5 Stars
Worth the Chili = 5 Stars -- [$6.50 on Amazon]
Never thought I could fall in love with a Bug. Well, after reading this book, I really think this author could make me do most anything. She could tell me the sky was green and the grass was blue. I'd be looking at it and know it wasn't true and believe it anyway. She has this way about her. She attacks bigotry and your personal paradigm at it very core through the most unlikely characters. Just truly extraordinary talent.
My friend Jilly Boo says this perfectly and with pictures. I'll save us both time and just add her link now.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Sanford's tenacity is heroic. She is his breath. He is her soul.
I'm planning to read all this remarkable authors books. None of these sound like something I'd normally read. There's beauty in that.
Happy Reading!
Overall Rating = 5 Amazing Stars
Book Cover / Book Blurb / Book Title = 2 / 4 / 5 = 3 Stars
Writer’s Voice = 5 Stars
Character Development = 5 Stars
Story Appreciation = 5 Stars
Worth the Chili = 5 Stars -- [$6.50 on Amazon]
Never thought I could fall in love with a Bug. Well, after reading this book, I really think this author could make me do most anything. She could tell me the sky was green and the grass was blue. I'd be looking at it and know it wasn't true and believe it anyway. She has this way about her. She attacks bigotry and your personal paradigm at it very core through the most unlikely characters. Just truly extraordinary talent.
My friend Jilly Boo says this perfectly and with pictures. I'll save us both time and just add her link now.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Sanford's tenacity is heroic. She is his breath. He is her soul.
I'm planning to read all this remarkable authors books. None of these sound like something I'd normally read. There's beauty in that.
Happy Reading!
November 28, 2013
3.75 stars - Strong start, boring middle, and very powerful ending!
The world-building was terrific. The reader is always aware one of the protagonist is an alien, yet the emotions are all very human. A father bringing a child into a horrible situation for hope in a brutal human world. His need to protect his son, the shame of his selfishness, and the endless battle to survive. The child's innocence amidst the refuse and death, as this is all he's known his whole life.
There's so much creativity in developing the alien characters. From their home planet to their mating process, all behaviors and mannerisms are built from the ground up adding unique touches. We are reminded that they are not human, but dialogue, backstory, and internal conflicts remind us the aliens are men and women.
This story lacks the eroticism Heat and The Last Hour of Gann included, but the focus is not the sex; it's the developing relationship between Sara, Sanford, and his son. Also, it's about trying to make a difference despite the realization that the changes and hope offered may be making things worse and, ultimately, result in nothing changed for the better.
There aren't any graphic rape scenes. (I was very relieved.) The plot became long-winded and monotonous through much of the middle, like thirty to seventy percent of the ebook. The reward is the dynamic last thirty percent. Wow! Be prepared for an emotional wringer because the pain, the horror, the courage, and love expressed are intense.
So, the beginning earned about 3.5 stars. The middle - forty percent of the book - was about 3 stars (boring, eye of the beholder 2.5). The ending was 5 stars.
January 10, 2019
Love love loved it!
This is officially going in my Favourites shelt (never thought I'd say something like this about a SF book, lol).
What can I say that the others haven't already said?
It's catchy, I couldn't put it down. I ate, slept and went to work with this book! I cried and laughed and cried and laughed again.
The characters are amazing, the plot is absolutely fantastic and the writing style is something every author should aspire to.
Even if you're not a SF reader, this book is for you. If you love HF, this book is for you. If you enjoy romance, this book is for you. If you like a good mystery and science, guess what? This book is for you!
Definitely worth reading by everyone!
approved by Snape
This is officially going in my Favourites shelt (never thought I'd say something like this about a SF book, lol).
What can I say that the others haven't already said?
It's catchy, I couldn't put it down. I ate, slept and went to work with this book! I cried and laughed and cried and laughed again.
The characters are amazing, the plot is absolutely fantastic and the writing style is something every author should aspire to.
Even if you're not a SF reader, this book is for you. If you love HF, this book is for you. If you enjoy romance, this book is for you. If you like a good mystery and science, guess what? This book is for you!
Definitely worth reading by everyone!
approved by Snape
March 30, 2013
Depressing subject matter - victims in refugee concentration camps. Too much horror and helplessness.
This is a story type that I have never liked - the main characters are helpless or victims through most of the book. However, readers who like Oprah-type books might like it - and maybe hard core sci-fi enthusiasts.
The author is talented. I enjoyed her other books Heat and Olivia.
STORY BRIEF:
Aliens accidentally land on earth due to mechanical problems. The IBI (International Bureau of Immigration) is created and run by the evil Van Meyer. IBI use guns and force aliens to live in concentration camps which are ghetto/slums without enough food or water. They are tortured, experimented on, and killed. Most humans are unaware of this, since no interaction with aliens or photos are allowed.
OPINION:
If you change the words Aliens to Jews and IBI to Nazis, it’s the same story as the Nazi concentration camps. The only thing missing is gas chambers. Most of the book is depressing because of the suffering, fear, and horrible events. I did not like watching the torture of Sarah and aliens. There is a happy ending for the aliens, but I didn’t feel happy. Also, I was disappointed that not enough bad happened to the bad guys - no justice. The author was silent about Piotr - the worst thug in the IBI. And I wanted Van Meyer to suffer which he did not. His ending was too easy.
I liked the relationship development between Sarah and Sanford and T’aki. I was intrigued with the character Samaritan.
There is some interesting sex between human women and alien men (think cockroach).
On another subject:
In the author’s note at the end, she says after she wrote the first draft of Cottonwood she saw “a little movie called District 9” by Neill Blomkamp which was almost identical to her story. So she changed/rewrote her story. My opinion: don’t do that. I have read so many books that have similar stories. And I have enjoyed them. Whatever comes out of your head should guide you. I might have liked your first draft better than this. Think of the hundreds of regency romance stories out there. They have more of the same stories than any other genre. Also, I believe the majority of readers will never see that movie. I had never heard of it and don’t plan to see it.
I’m reminded of the movies “A Bug’s Life” and “Antz”. The Pixar creator of ABL naively told his Dreamworks friend what he was doing. Dreamworks then copied the idea and created Antz which released the same year. ABL was wonderful and better than Antz (according to Netflix stars). The ABL creator did not change his movie just because another similar one was out there, which was the right decision.
DATA:
Narrative mode: 3rd person. Kindle count length: 9,224 (811 KB) 467 pages. Swearing language: strong including religious swear words. Sexual language: mild. Number of sex scenes: 6. Violence: strong. Setting: the near future U.S. Copyright: 2012. Genre: sci-fi with a little romance.
This is a story type that I have never liked - the main characters are helpless or victims through most of the book. However, readers who like Oprah-type books might like it - and maybe hard core sci-fi enthusiasts.
The author is talented. I enjoyed her other books Heat and Olivia.
STORY BRIEF:
Aliens accidentally land on earth due to mechanical problems. The IBI (International Bureau of Immigration) is created and run by the evil Van Meyer. IBI use guns and force aliens to live in concentration camps which are ghetto/slums without enough food or water. They are tortured, experimented on, and killed. Most humans are unaware of this, since no interaction with aliens or photos are allowed.
OPINION:
If you change the words Aliens to Jews and IBI to Nazis, it’s the same story as the Nazi concentration camps. The only thing missing is gas chambers. Most of the book is depressing because of the suffering, fear, and horrible events. I did not like watching the torture of Sarah and aliens. There is a happy ending for the aliens, but I didn’t feel happy. Also, I was disappointed that not enough bad happened to the bad guys - no justice. The author was silent about Piotr - the worst thug in the IBI. And I wanted Van Meyer to suffer which he did not. His ending was too easy.
I liked the relationship development between Sarah and Sanford and T’aki. I was intrigued with the character Samaritan.
There is some interesting sex between human women and alien men (think cockroach).
On another subject:
In the author’s note at the end, she says after she wrote the first draft of Cottonwood she saw “a little movie called District 9” by Neill Blomkamp which was almost identical to her story. So she changed/rewrote her story. My opinion: don’t do that. I have read so many books that have similar stories. And I have enjoyed them. Whatever comes out of your head should guide you. I might have liked your first draft better than this. Think of the hundreds of regency romance stories out there. They have more of the same stories than any other genre. Also, I believe the majority of readers will never see that movie. I had never heard of it and don’t plan to see it.
I’m reminded of the movies “A Bug’s Life” and “Antz”. The Pixar creator of ABL naively told his Dreamworks friend what he was doing. Dreamworks then copied the idea and created Antz which released the same year. ABL was wonderful and better than Antz (according to Netflix stars). The ABL creator did not change his movie just because another similar one was out there, which was the right decision.
DATA:
Narrative mode: 3rd person. Kindle count length: 9,224 (811 KB) 467 pages. Swearing language: strong including religious swear words. Sexual language: mild. Number of sex scenes: 6. Violence: strong. Setting: the near future U.S. Copyright: 2012. Genre: sci-fi with a little romance.
January 26, 2015
This woman could hand me her grocery list and I'd read the damn thing
August 12, 2016
Welcome to Cottonwood.
"I could be part of something big here," insisted Sarah, undaunted. Her chest felt hot, almost like it did before she started crying, but she wasn't upset. She was...She was...She was certain! This was it! The perfect job! A house and good money and most of all, best of all, the chance to be where it mattered, to do something in a way that could change the world, two worlds!
When Sarah Fowler arrives at Cottonwood, she is excited. It's a chance for her to become a part of something good--to help intergrate the aliens living behind the guarded walls of the immigration camp. She has been intrigued by the aliens since their arrival to Earth twenty years earlier. Once beyond the walls, however, she finds the immigration camps are not what they appear to be...
Evil is unspectacular and always human,
and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
- W.H. Auden
This story contains everything I've come to expect from author R. Lee Smith: rich storytelling, excellent worldbuilding, and excellent characterizations. I wish other authors would take notes from Smith. In what seems to be, at least for me, a stagnant book world in romancelandia, her stories, the three I've read so far, always feel unique and fresh.
Here is a brief list of what stood out for me most:
❖The Internment Camp:
One thing I loved the most was the realism of the story. Yeah, okay, this is a story about aliens on Earth. I know. But, the conditions faced by the aliens, as well as the mirror placed on humanity was very realistic. Here you see both the ugly aspects of humanity as well as the good or heroic aspects of humanity. What I found most compelling were the actions of ordinary people--any one of them could be us: you, me, our family, our coworkers, or our friends.
I also give kudos to the author for not shying away from consequences. Here there are consequences to actions and bad things do happen.
❖The Romance:
As I jokingly told my friend Jill, we wanted aliens, well we got aliens. Instead of giving us the usual Hero, which looks like this:
we get a true alien Hero that looks like this:
The author doesn't mess around. She really goes balls to the wall on this one, and I commend her. I love that she doesn't make it easy on her readers. I also love that she manages to make the romance realistic, no insta-love here clearly, and by the end I truly believed in the love between the hero and the heroine.
One small quibble I do have, however, is that I would have liked a little more conflict from the heroine in regards to her attraction for the Hero. I needed a little more building of the romance from her side. I felt like the progression of love from Sanford's side was handled slightly better. For Sarah, while I did believe in her love by the end, I thought there needed to be more transition from the friendship she initially felt to her realization that she was in love.
❖The Ending:
The final portion of this book was incredible. It was an emotional rollercoaster, I was on the edge of my seat and I was in tears. I thought the author knocked it out of the park.
All in all, a great read. If you're looking for something a little different, and if you like stories that may not fit the usual mold for romance, then I highly recommend this book.
Final Rating: 5 stars
"I could be part of something big here," insisted Sarah, undaunted. Her chest felt hot, almost like it did before she started crying, but she wasn't upset. She was...She was...She was certain! This was it! The perfect job! A house and good money and most of all, best of all, the chance to be where it mattered, to do something in a way that could change the world, two worlds!
When Sarah Fowler arrives at Cottonwood, she is excited. It's a chance for her to become a part of something good--to help intergrate the aliens living behind the guarded walls of the immigration camp. She has been intrigued by the aliens since their arrival to Earth twenty years earlier. Once beyond the walls, however, she finds the immigration camps are not what they appear to be...
Evil is unspectacular and always human,
and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
- W.H. Auden
This story contains everything I've come to expect from author R. Lee Smith: rich storytelling, excellent worldbuilding, and excellent characterizations. I wish other authors would take notes from Smith. In what seems to be, at least for me, a stagnant book world in romancelandia, her stories, the three I've read so far, always feel unique and fresh.
Here is a brief list of what stood out for me most:
❖The Internment Camp:
One thing I loved the most was the realism of the story. Yeah, okay, this is a story about aliens on Earth. I know. But, the conditions faced by the aliens, as well as the mirror placed on humanity was very realistic. Here you see both the ugly aspects of humanity as well as the good or heroic aspects of humanity. What I found most compelling were the actions of ordinary people--any one of them could be us: you, me, our family, our coworkers, or our friends.
I also give kudos to the author for not shying away from consequences. Here there are consequences to actions and bad things do happen.
❖The Romance:
As I jokingly told my friend Jill, we wanted aliens, well we got aliens. Instead of giving us the usual Hero, which looks like this:
we get a true alien Hero that looks like this:
The author doesn't mess around. She really goes balls to the wall on this one, and I commend her. I love that she doesn't make it easy on her readers. I also love that she manages to make the romance realistic, no insta-love here clearly, and by the end I truly believed in the love between the hero and the heroine.
One small quibble I do have, however, is that I would have liked a little more conflict from the heroine in regards to her attraction for the Hero. I needed a little more building of the romance from her side. I felt like the progression of love from Sanford's side was handled slightly better. For Sarah, while I did believe in her love by the end, I thought there needed to be more transition from the friendship she initially felt to her realization that she was in love.
❖The Ending:
The final portion of this book was incredible. It was an emotional rollercoaster, I was on the edge of my seat and I was in tears. I thought the author knocked it out of the park.
All in all, a great read. If you're looking for something a little different, and if you like stories that may not fit the usual mold for romance, then I highly recommend this book.
Final Rating: 5 stars
April 30, 2017
I loved this book,its not for the faint hearted and was very upsetting in places so might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I would urge everyone to give it a go, the story was very well written and I think I was permanently attached to my kindle for a couple of days, any author who can take this subject matter and make me fall in love with another species (bugs,no offence Sandford)and his cute little Jellybean T'aki is a keeper I hope to enjoy many more of this authors stories.In fact I am off to read Heat next.
March 10, 2016
10 I AM YOU AND YOU ARE ME, FOREVER, STARS
Reading the afterword of this book I found out that this was the companion of The Last Hour Of Gann, it actually proceeded it, what a chance I read it before Heat, my initial choice after TLHOG!
As in a film negative, humans here are interacting with aliens just the other way around, with the aliens - of a bug kind - being the unwanted, emprisoned, victimized specie on our planet.
I haven't watched District 9, I haven't checked it out either during reading, I had absolutely no already formed imaginary when I entered the story and I'm glad. All I wanted, all I needed was R. Lee Smith heartstopping storytelling and that's exactly what I got.
Once again I am unable to take this story lightly, even if there are clearly so many fictional elements it's the tragically realistic, downright scary contemporary bits that have a striking resonance for me. I have to repeat myself, the sci-fi of her books is a giant magnifying glass on humanity, what we have been, what we are, what we could be. How rotten beings can be, but also, how not everyone can be bad all the time.
I come from a family that lived WWII, from an ex-fascist country, surrounded by people who survived concentration camps, I grew up with stories of hunger, poverty, ignorance, life-sparing tricks and the typical surviver guilt, a consistent minute shame for being part of this race, amongst other things. I live now in a country whose colonists have been responsible for the Apartheid, a sore wound not only for South Africa, a country that I've seen disintegrating its social structure to the actual point of pure xenophobia and shouted intolerance, where I have never been able to feel NOT a stranger, even if it gave me the means to a good life. Europe is proving totally unable to deal, offering unified policy and values, with this unstoppable wave of refugees. We all are damn aliens somehow, somewhere.
Many fellow reviewers pointed out the horror of the situation in Cottonwood and the other camps, where aliens can barely survive in completly unsanitary conditions, malnourished, beaten, killed, deprived of the right to reproduce even, and let's not forget the cold, disheartened medical experiments done on them, the vivisections...all of this is pointed out as perhaps excessive and I can only say, it is not. On the contrary, it is not enough. The author doesn't go for shock value, she could have indulged in the gore and she didn't. What humans have made to other humans so far is worse than anything described in this book, and we just keep perpetrating abhorrent behaviours. Ethnic rape, sex trafficking, religious wars, terrorism, honour rape, children soldiers, just the simple every day abuses, the list is infinite...our world is so very close to the hypocritical, hysterical human society inhabiting this book, where profit trumps all and the Other is just so conveniently easy to be made into a Monster, where people are so rightly called sheep by uber villain Van Meyer, that I just couldn't stop thinking of my life, here and now. We are each other's Hell, that is the truth. Anyone's life, under the right circumstances, is worth less than zero. Most people with power love fear and submission, they will abuse the power however they can, especially if they find no limits. That sadist bastard Piotr was even too real for me. And the things one would do to survive make moral compasses crumble.
Even though I could perfectly picture the alien race at a physical level, I kept forgetting all about it. There is nothing disgusting about them, not in their body, not in their sexuality, not in their souls. The author is so consistent, finding the right sounds and physical traits to paint physicality to complete reality, just to blur it all away exposing hearts and thoughts. The wonderfully fluid, descriptive but contained prose of R. Lee Smith gifted us with so many alive characters, forged by a twenty-year long captivity and a constant hassle for surviving that scarred everyone in different ways. There's violence, cynism, opportunism, resignation, hatred, numbness...as it should be. Take Samaritan for instance, is he really broken or is he surviving smartly? Time erodes everything, as Sanford states, sentiment first. And Sanford...he's a character that will tip-toe into your mind and will slowly envelop you in his stoic resistance, his moral fortitude and his quiet intensity until you can only love him and desperately need him to survive, to escape. I absolutely love that a certain saying about patience being more than a word appears in both books, Cottonwood ad TLHOG. The kind of patience Sanford has to practise daily is to me heroic, as his ability to accept, move forward, refuse to be broken. And make the right decisions even at the highest personal cost. His relation with his son T'aki is so intimate, so true, his guilt about having a son in the first place, just to doom him to slavery, as an act of selfishness is heartbreaking and very recognizable, as his love for him is total. Isn't having a child always a sligthly selfish act? We don't have to be in a camp to need a reason to want to live and someone to love. Sanford and T'aki will slip into your heart as they slip into Sarah's, to stay, to take root, just as much as Sarah slips into theirs, making the impossible possible, the intolerable tolerable. Love, no matter how nor where you find it, is grace, bliss, even if it can destroy you. The inevitability of Sanford's feelings progression is peppered with realistic doubts, fears, introspection and the contrast between growing desires that seem unnatural and the craving certitude in his core.
Sarah may seem perhaps too naive, too innocent, too good, but why should she be any different? She's young, idealistic, trying to make something of her life. She will crack working in the camps, she will open her eyes and bleed, bleed for all the other indifferent humans who don't give a shit and for the oppression she can't fix on her own. We should feel with her, the whole atrocity of the situation down to every little stomach churning aspect of it. Still, she will fight for the changes she can make, for the people she can save. She often feels too responsible and useless but damn, I'm guilty of that tendency too. She is not an action heroine, a planner, yet she won't hesitate when the time to act comes, her ethics don't waver, her sense of right and wrong guide her like a whip. One person at a time, that's all it takes to change things, for one person to decide what's too much, what's unfair, on the alien side as well. One person to start a chain reaction, refusing to be conniving or simply to ignore the fate of others. I am not even starting on the whole mediatic circus and public opinion theme present in Cottonwood, I think it's been proven enough how easy the masses can be controlled and lied to. She will pay for every kind act, she will pay with everything she has and is, yet she'll embrace it, her feelings with it. It's her light, compassionate personality, her indignation, her quirks, her stutter, her generosity and her voice, together with the reserved and persistant Sanford, that make the events in Cottonwood bearable, the tone somehow less severe. When she's left behind in the lab I feared the worst, I couldn't imagine how she could ever retain her mental sanity, the state she was in...but she did manage to put up some barriers, she surrendered physically, never her spirit completely. Like Sanford and T'aki, suspended in a moment, trying not to lose herself. I don't know if I would have managed in her situation, but I know a lot of actual people still go through something similar every day.
The way she and Sanford come together in the story, as a couple and as a family, gently, finding their physical union as well despite the sordidiness around them, despite the physical differences, even after everything that's happened, the way they are with each other and for one another, every little touch, the shared breaths, the oaths they exchange make it all peacefully, steadily, blossoming passionate. Isn't the whole point of loving someone making even the slightest contact sublime, being willing to please your partner in any way possible? Bug and human...molehills. Too perfect? I think they earned it in blood and bones, to rise above the pain, the misery, the loss.
I wish I could learn to leave behind the moments I don't, can't live in anymore, like they do. Moving on, without getting swallowed or dragged down by an atrocious past, what true strength, what real magic that is.
***********************************************
ORIGINAL REVIEW
Again with R.Lee Smith I am left breathless, a mix of bittersweet joy and pain, unable to let go of the story and the characters...full review to follow soon, as soon as I sort my emotions...
Reading the afterword of this book I found out that this was the companion of The Last Hour Of Gann, it actually proceeded it, what a chance I read it before Heat, my initial choice after TLHOG!
As in a film negative, humans here are interacting with aliens just the other way around, with the aliens - of a bug kind - being the unwanted, emprisoned, victimized specie on our planet.
I haven't watched District 9, I haven't checked it out either during reading, I had absolutely no already formed imaginary when I entered the story and I'm glad. All I wanted, all I needed was R. Lee Smith heartstopping storytelling and that's exactly what I got.
Once again I am unable to take this story lightly, even if there are clearly so many fictional elements it's the tragically realistic, downright scary contemporary bits that have a striking resonance for me. I have to repeat myself, the sci-fi of her books is a giant magnifying glass on humanity, what we have been, what we are, what we could be. How rotten beings can be, but also, how not everyone can be bad all the time.
I come from a family that lived WWII, from an ex-fascist country, surrounded by people who survived concentration camps, I grew up with stories of hunger, poverty, ignorance, life-sparing tricks and the typical surviver guilt, a consistent minute shame for being part of this race, amongst other things. I live now in a country whose colonists have been responsible for the Apartheid, a sore wound not only for South Africa, a country that I've seen disintegrating its social structure to the actual point of pure xenophobia and shouted intolerance, where I have never been able to feel NOT a stranger, even if it gave me the means to a good life. Europe is proving totally unable to deal, offering unified policy and values, with this unstoppable wave of refugees. We all are damn aliens somehow, somewhere.
Many fellow reviewers pointed out the horror of the situation in Cottonwood and the other camps, where aliens can barely survive in completly unsanitary conditions, malnourished, beaten, killed, deprived of the right to reproduce even, and let's not forget the cold, disheartened medical experiments done on them, the vivisections...all of this is pointed out as perhaps excessive and I can only say, it is not. On the contrary, it is not enough. The author doesn't go for shock value, she could have indulged in the gore and she didn't. What humans have made to other humans so far is worse than anything described in this book, and we just keep perpetrating abhorrent behaviours. Ethnic rape, sex trafficking, religious wars, terrorism, honour rape, children soldiers, just the simple every day abuses, the list is infinite...our world is so very close to the hypocritical, hysterical human society inhabiting this book, where profit trumps all and the Other is just so conveniently easy to be made into a Monster, where people are so rightly called sheep by uber villain Van Meyer, that I just couldn't stop thinking of my life, here and now. We are each other's Hell, that is the truth. Anyone's life, under the right circumstances, is worth less than zero. Most people with power love fear and submission, they will abuse the power however they can, especially if they find no limits. That sadist bastard Piotr was even too real for me. And the things one would do to survive make moral compasses crumble.
Even though I could perfectly picture the alien race at a physical level, I kept forgetting all about it. There is nothing disgusting about them, not in their body, not in their sexuality, not in their souls. The author is so consistent, finding the right sounds and physical traits to paint physicality to complete reality, just to blur it all away exposing hearts and thoughts. The wonderfully fluid, descriptive but contained prose of R. Lee Smith gifted us with so many alive characters, forged by a twenty-year long captivity and a constant hassle for surviving that scarred everyone in different ways. There's violence, cynism, opportunism, resignation, hatred, numbness...as it should be. Take Samaritan for instance, is he really broken or is he surviving smartly? Time erodes everything, as Sanford states, sentiment first. And Sanford...he's a character that will tip-toe into your mind and will slowly envelop you in his stoic resistance, his moral fortitude and his quiet intensity until you can only love him and desperately need him to survive, to escape. I absolutely love that a certain saying about patience being more than a word appears in both books, Cottonwood ad TLHOG. The kind of patience Sanford has to practise daily is to me heroic, as his ability to accept, move forward, refuse to be broken. And make the right decisions even at the highest personal cost. His relation with his son T'aki is so intimate, so true, his guilt about having a son in the first place, just to doom him to slavery, as an act of selfishness is heartbreaking and very recognizable, as his love for him is total. Isn't having a child always a sligthly selfish act? We don't have to be in a camp to need a reason to want to live and someone to love. Sanford and T'aki will slip into your heart as they slip into Sarah's, to stay, to take root, just as much as Sarah slips into theirs, making the impossible possible, the intolerable tolerable. Love, no matter how nor where you find it, is grace, bliss, even if it can destroy you. The inevitability of Sanford's feelings progression is peppered with realistic doubts, fears, introspection and the contrast between growing desires that seem unnatural and the craving certitude in his core.
Sarah may seem perhaps too naive, too innocent, too good, but why should she be any different? She's young, idealistic, trying to make something of her life. She will crack working in the camps, she will open her eyes and bleed, bleed for all the other indifferent humans who don't give a shit and for the oppression she can't fix on her own. We should feel with her, the whole atrocity of the situation down to every little stomach churning aspect of it. Still, she will fight for the changes she can make, for the people she can save. She often feels too responsible and useless but damn, I'm guilty of that tendency too. She is not an action heroine, a planner, yet she won't hesitate when the time to act comes, her ethics don't waver, her sense of right and wrong guide her like a whip. One person at a time, that's all it takes to change things, for one person to decide what's too much, what's unfair, on the alien side as well. One person to start a chain reaction, refusing to be conniving or simply to ignore the fate of others. I am not even starting on the whole mediatic circus and public opinion theme present in Cottonwood, I think it's been proven enough how easy the masses can be controlled and lied to. She will pay for every kind act, she will pay with everything she has and is, yet she'll embrace it, her feelings with it. It's her light, compassionate personality, her indignation, her quirks, her stutter, her generosity and her voice, together with the reserved and persistant Sanford, that make the events in Cottonwood bearable, the tone somehow less severe. When she's left behind in the lab I feared the worst, I couldn't imagine how she could ever retain her mental sanity, the state she was in...but she did manage to put up some barriers, she surrendered physically, never her spirit completely. Like Sanford and T'aki, suspended in a moment, trying not to lose herself. I don't know if I would have managed in her situation, but I know a lot of actual people still go through something similar every day.
The way she and Sanford come together in the story, as a couple and as a family, gently, finding their physical union as well despite the sordidiness around them, despite the physical differences, even after everything that's happened, the way they are with each other and for one another, every little touch, the shared breaths, the oaths they exchange make it all peacefully, steadily, blossoming passionate. Isn't the whole point of loving someone making even the slightest contact sublime, being willing to please your partner in any way possible? Bug and human...molehills. Too perfect? I think they earned it in blood and bones, to rise above the pain, the misery, the loss.
I wish I could learn to leave behind the moments I don't, can't live in anymore, like they do. Moving on, without getting swallowed or dragged down by an atrocious past, what true strength, what real magic that is.
***********************************************
ORIGINAL REVIEW
Again with R.Lee Smith I am left breathless, a mix of bittersweet joy and pain, unable to let go of the story and the characters...full review to follow soon, as soon as I sort my emotions...
May 7, 2023
The Last Hour of Gann, Cottonwood, and now I’ll check out Land of the Beautiful Dead.
Cottonwood, Kansas was… well, you know I hate to spoil a story!
Cottonwood, Kansas was… well, you know I hate to spoil a story!
May 21, 2020
re-read
Gah, what can I say about this book...
It's a heartwarming, heartbreaking, gut wrenching, inspiring and devastating read about some of the best and worst aspects of humanity- along with a tragic love story between a human woman and a refugee alien stranded in horrible living conditions on Earth.
P.S.--Man I gotta say that ending got me right in the feels.
But be warned- like most of R. Lee Smith's book's she doesn't pull punches, gets pretty graphic, and there are a LOT of dark themes in this book. (However, I would consider this tamer than some of her other books I've read- if thats anything to go by)
So it's on KU, and if your down for an emotional read I'd say pick it up.
Gah, what can I say about this book...
It's a heartwarming, heartbreaking, gut wrenching, inspiring and devastating read about some of the best and worst aspects of humanity- along with a tragic love story between a human woman and a refugee alien stranded in horrible living conditions on Earth.
P.S.--Man I gotta say that ending got me right in the feels.
But be warned- like most of R. Lee Smith's book's she doesn't pull punches, gets pretty graphic, and there are a LOT of dark themes in this book. (However, I would consider this tamer than some of her other books I've read- if thats anything to go by)
So it's on KU, and if your down for an emotional read I'd say pick it up.
November 15, 2014
*SPOILER FREE*
Like Last Hour of Gann, Cottonwood shows the ugly face of humanity, the eager exploitation of anyone "other" we manage so well thanks to our sense of self-entitlement, racial prejudice, unreasonable fear and my favorite, - wilful blindness. And yet, R.Lee Smith creates characters whose force of will and hope manage to balance the scales and make reading her bleak, harsh stories worthwhile.
If Last Hour of Gann took a group of humans and dropped them into an unknown universe among a hostile alien race, Cottonwood flipped this scenario on its head. It took a ship of alien settlers malfunctioning and making an emergency landing on Earth in need of assistance. Twenty five years later the aliens are scattered across the globe, separated from their families, prohibited to multiply and exploited with hard labour under the guise of assimilation, while human scientists keep trying to crack the secrets of their technology and weaponry.
I read on R.Lee Smith's blog, that while the book was written before the movie District 9, when the movie came out unexpectedly there were so many similarities in the general concept that she had to re-write it. Nevertheless, Cottonwood is a powerful, moving and incredibly satisfying sci fi romance.
Sarah Fowler, the main heroine, is a young unemployed woman in her mid twenties desperate for some well paid work. So when she sees a recruitment ad for the new camp, she signs up as one of the human liaisons for aliens, whom humans call "bugs".
Fresh, wide eyed and ready to make a change, Sarah gets through her training and starts working only to find herself shell shocked with the inhuman conditions of the camps, the children living in squalor and playing with bits of rubbish, with human guards abusing their power... The whole lot.
The insectoid like aliens are bitter, afraid and bone weary, and at the same time so very human in their suffering. Sarah befriends one of the yang'ti, Sanford (humans assign everyone a name) and his little son and both of them slowly try to make a change. I am simplifying everything here, of course. There is so much complexity to Sarah and Sanford's interactions, so many nuances to their friendship and Sarah's desperate attempts to help.
When they start caring about each other more, RLS doesn't shy away from their otherness to each other. I love how there is no lust which is born from visual desires (they actually find each other ugly and extremely unappealing), instead there is a need to get close to your loved one. It's sincere and believable and very tender.
The majority of this book is simple horror, sometimes almost unbearable in its cruelty, but there are so many beautiful moments that they take your breath away. RLS is a master of that.
She doesn't spare her characters, but what doesn't kill them make them so much stronger and more formidable. Sarah is not like Amber from Last Hour of Gann. She doesn't oppose to the big bad guys openly and she says what they want to hear, but because she understands the consequences of her decisions I can admire her way of solving things so much more.
I LOVED that book and I worship at altar of R. Lee Smith. She is amazing, and I recommend her to anyone who doesn't shy away from strong topics. I swear, it's worth it in the end.
Like Last Hour of Gann, Cottonwood shows the ugly face of humanity, the eager exploitation of anyone "other" we manage so well thanks to our sense of self-entitlement, racial prejudice, unreasonable fear and my favorite, - wilful blindness. And yet, R.Lee Smith creates characters whose force of will and hope manage to balance the scales and make reading her bleak, harsh stories worthwhile.
If Last Hour of Gann took a group of humans and dropped them into an unknown universe among a hostile alien race, Cottonwood flipped this scenario on its head. It took a ship of alien settlers malfunctioning and making an emergency landing on Earth in need of assistance. Twenty five years later the aliens are scattered across the globe, separated from their families, prohibited to multiply and exploited with hard labour under the guise of assimilation, while human scientists keep trying to crack the secrets of their technology and weaponry.
I read on R.Lee Smith's blog, that while the book was written before the movie District 9, when the movie came out unexpectedly there were so many similarities in the general concept that she had to re-write it. Nevertheless, Cottonwood is a powerful, moving and incredibly satisfying sci fi romance.
Sarah Fowler, the main heroine, is a young unemployed woman in her mid twenties desperate for some well paid work. So when she sees a recruitment ad for the new camp, she signs up as one of the human liaisons for aliens, whom humans call "bugs".
Fresh, wide eyed and ready to make a change, Sarah gets through her training and starts working only to find herself shell shocked with the inhuman conditions of the camps, the children living in squalor and playing with bits of rubbish, with human guards abusing their power... The whole lot.
The insectoid like aliens are bitter, afraid and bone weary, and at the same time so very human in their suffering. Sarah befriends one of the yang'ti, Sanford (humans assign everyone a name) and his little son and both of them slowly try to make a change. I am simplifying everything here, of course. There is so much complexity to Sarah and Sanford's interactions, so many nuances to their friendship and Sarah's desperate attempts to help.
When they start caring about each other more, RLS doesn't shy away from their otherness to each other. I love how there is no lust which is born from visual desires (they actually find each other ugly and extremely unappealing), instead there is a need to get close to your loved one. It's sincere and believable and very tender.
The majority of this book is simple horror, sometimes almost unbearable in its cruelty, but there are so many beautiful moments that they take your breath away. RLS is a master of that.
She doesn't spare her characters, but what doesn't kill them make them so much stronger and more formidable. Sarah is not like Amber from Last Hour of Gann. She doesn't oppose to the big bad guys openly and she says what they want to hear, but because she understands the consequences of her decisions I can admire her way of solving things so much more.
I LOVED that book and I worship at altar of R. Lee Smith. She is amazing, and I recommend her to anyone who doesn't shy away from strong topics. I swear, it's worth it in the end.
December 30, 2020
4.5 Stars
Cottonwood is a dark sci-fi with a slow burn romance and strong supporting characters. Twenty years ago, a ship of yang’ti were stranded on Earth, and rather than helping them, they were placed in torture/concentration camps across the world and experimented on. Cottonwood is one of the camps, and Sarah Fowler/ Pollyanna (his words) comes to work as a social worker for the yang’ti people. (bugs)
It takes a while for the story to get going (at least for me), but if you can stick with it, it's great. Sarah starts out extremely naïve and pretty clueless about everything. Eventually, she begins bonding with the “bugs” especially a single father (Sanford) and his young son. (T’aki) She soon realizes things are not as she’s been told and sets out to aid in their freedom.
I label this genre as “hardcore sci-fi”; in other words, the aliens are TOTALLY alien. It’s not romantic, nor is it steamy/sexy. The aliens resemble bugs (I pictured cockroaches & crickets) with claspers, antennae, molting, cloacal vens, palps, and spermatogus. They copulate, so there's some insect/human fornicating going on. The “romance” really takes a backseat to the struggle to survive, and friendships, but Sarah and Sanford’s relationship is special in its own way. The sacrifices and dedication they have to each other was beautiful amongst all the misery.
There were just a couple of things I wished were developed/expanded on. I’d also liked to see farther in the couple’s future, but we can’t have it all. 😊 (I did enjoy the backstory of a few of the program’s survivors)
Bottom Line- I really liked it, and if you can get over the insect/human dynamic; there's a very moving/thought provoking story. Regardless, I applaud 👏👏 R.L.S. for being true to her vision, because it would have been easier for most readers to accept if Sanford resembled a human. *The plot is very similar to the movie District 9, so if you liked that, you’ll love this. The human’s treatment of the “bugs” is similar to the Holocaust, so if that is a sensitivity…you might want to pass.
Cottonwood is a dark sci-fi with a slow burn romance and strong supporting characters. Twenty years ago, a ship of yang’ti were stranded on Earth, and rather than helping them, they were placed in torture/concentration camps across the world and experimented on. Cottonwood is one of the camps, and Sarah Fowler/ Pollyanna (his words) comes to work as a social worker for the yang’ti people. (bugs)
It takes a while for the story to get going (at least for me), but if you can stick with it, it's great. Sarah starts out extremely naïve and pretty clueless about everything. Eventually, she begins bonding with the “bugs” especially a single father (Sanford) and his young son. (T’aki) She soon realizes things are not as she’s been told and sets out to aid in their freedom.
I label this genre as “hardcore sci-fi”; in other words, the aliens are TOTALLY alien. It’s not romantic, nor is it steamy/sexy. The aliens resemble bugs (I pictured cockroaches & crickets) with claspers, antennae, molting, cloacal vens, palps, and spermatogus. They copulate, so there's some insect/human fornicating going on. The “romance” really takes a backseat to the struggle to survive, and friendships, but Sarah and Sanford’s relationship is special in its own way. The sacrifices and dedication they have to each other was beautiful amongst all the misery.
There were just a couple of things I wished were developed/expanded on. I’d also liked to see farther in the couple’s future, but we can’t have it all. 😊 (I did enjoy the backstory of a few of the program’s survivors)
Bottom Line- I really liked it, and if you can get over the insect/human dynamic; there's a very moving/thought provoking story. Regardless, I applaud 👏👏 R.L.S. for being true to her vision, because it would have been easier for most readers to accept if Sanford resembled a human. *The plot is very similar to the movie District 9, so if you liked that, you’ll love this. The human’s treatment of the “bugs” is similar to the Holocaust, so if that is a sensitivity…you might want to pass.
January 31, 2021
Oh.
Oh... wow.
This book is intense with shots of breathtaking beauty throughout it. Reading it was an experience. I both dreaded what was coming next but also compelled to keep going to see the beautiful bits come to fruition; I needed to reach the point where Sarah and Sanford were going to be OK. It was worth every soul-crushing ugly thing to see that beautiful truth peek out. This story will stay with me a long time.
Trigger/Content Warning: Violence, torture, and mentioned/implied rape.
So much has already been said about this story that there isn't anything I feel I can add. Conversely, I could talk about this book for days if anyone in my immediate vicinity would let me.
Despite her self-critical remarks in the Afterward, Smith is a gem of an author in the SFR genre. Please, Ms. Smith, start writing SFR again soon. I'm glad you're enjoying that FNaF fanfic, but we miss you over here. She has such a talent for narrative, theme, and creating characters who in other works are flat and over-done tropes... not to mention how damned good she is at writing a slow progression of feelings that is organic and never instalove-y. Smith's aliens are always alien-aliens with deep emotional lives that can be connected to. And how she made me love a character like Sarah is beyond me; she's so well-written without the usual garbage that comes with it. I appreciate that Smith concludes each story with the dates she worked on it; it's obvious she puts a lot of time, love, and care into her works. Her worlds will never be happy ones and are filled with things of nightmares and humanity's worst, but they also have beautiful truths in them, just waiting to be plucked out and appreciated. Like a little painted tin can full of grass to brighten your day.
Oh... wow.
This book is intense with shots of breathtaking beauty throughout it. Reading it was an experience. I both dreaded what was coming next but also compelled to keep going to see the beautiful bits come to fruition; I needed to reach the point where Sarah and Sanford were going to be OK. It was worth every soul-crushing ugly thing to see that beautiful truth peek out. This story will stay with me a long time.
Trigger/Content Warning: Violence, torture, and mentioned/implied rape.
So much has already been said about this story that there isn't anything I feel I can add. Conversely, I could talk about this book for days if anyone in my immediate vicinity would let me.
Despite her self-critical remarks in the Afterward, Smith is a gem of an author in the SFR genre. Please, Ms. Smith, start writing SFR again soon. I'm glad you're enjoying that FNaF fanfic, but we miss you over here. She has such a talent for narrative, theme, and creating characters who in other works are flat and over-done tropes... not to mention how damned good she is at writing a slow progression of feelings that is organic and never instalove-y. Smith's aliens are always alien-aliens with deep emotional lives that can be connected to. And how she made me love a character like Sarah is beyond me; she's so well-written without the usual garbage that comes with it. I appreciate that Smith concludes each story with the dates she worked on it; it's obvious she puts a lot of time, love, and care into her works. Her worlds will never be happy ones and are filled with things of nightmares and humanity's worst, but they also have beautiful truths in them, just waiting to be plucked out and appreciated. Like a little painted tin can full of grass to brighten your day.
June 21, 2022
TW : animal torture and death, abuse, r*pe, physical assault, physical and mental torture
Ok, I don't even want to write a review stating what I liked and didn't like about this book, but I will say this : I'm angry.
Cottonwood is not even a fanfic of district 9 at this point. And don't get me started on the "oh, it's just coincidential" thing. It's plain and simple plagia. The description of the aliens are the same. The main character (sanford) has a son, like in the movie. Again, the same. The way they live in concentration camp is also the same. He is constructing something to leave with the mothership - like the movie. They have caseworker - like the movie. They speak in the same way (chirp and click) - like the movie.
And I could go on and on.
It's the same, and it's not just taking some of it for inspiration at this point. It's not ok to do this.
So yeah, I would not recommend this book. It's stealing others ideas, concepts, and I don't care if it's from a multinational.
Ok, I don't even want to write a review stating what I liked and didn't like about this book, but I will say this : I'm angry.
Cottonwood is not even a fanfic of district 9 at this point. And don't get me started on the "oh, it's just coincidential" thing. It's plain and simple plagia. The description of the aliens are the same. The main character (sanford) has a son, like in the movie. Again, the same. The way they live in concentration camp is also the same. He is constructing something to leave with the mothership - like the movie. They have caseworker - like the movie. They speak in the same way (chirp and click) - like the movie.
And I could go on and on.
It's the same, and it's not just taking some of it for inspiration at this point. It's not ok to do this.
So yeah, I would not recommend this book. It's stealing others ideas, concepts, and I don't care if it's from a multinational.
Want to read
June 19, 2013Thanks (I guess?;p) Steel. Sounds Like I may not survive this. Maybe I should try Heat first.
Note:Quite gruesome, though hopeful in the end. Extremely graphic torture descriptions at time, strong prison/concentration camp theme. No gimmicks, excellent world-building and realism, respectful. Not for the faint-hearted
Note:Quite gruesome, though hopeful in the end. Extremely graphic torture descriptions at time, strong prison/concentration camp theme. No gimmicks, excellent world-building and realism, respectful. Not for the faint-hearted
April 8, 2019
Hmm.
By no means this was a bad book, I just...
Maybe my expectations were too high, after reading Land of the Beautiful Dead by this author, and absolutely loving it.
But honestly? I think this book fell short for me for two reasons that just really irked me throughout it all.
It wasn't the writing style (which was just as amazing), it wasn't the world-building (which was great), it wasn't even the protagonist herself, Sarah (despite me not really understanding her overwhelming kindness), it was (some mild spoilers ahead):
Was this book about, how to physically torture the protagonist every few chapters or so to the point where you break her bones, cut her fingers off, and beat her near death? Because if so! Wow, success! I tell you, success!
What the heck?
No seriously, WHAT the heck?
It's not that I do not expect some kind of torture in those type of dark reads. In this book, however, it was to the point of madness. And pointlessness. It was like the protagonist's sole purpose was to get beaten up and tortured. And it was just... I couldn't even be horrified - although I was - because I was too busy wondering "is there a point to this meaningless pain?" No, there was no point except for her to be in pain throughout all of this book, be it emotional or physical.
And for what?
Nothing at all.
Not even for her beloved to rescue her (on time, even), hug her, avenge her, DO SOMETHING that isn't letting her constantly be beaten up emotionally and physically. Nope, he just sat aside in all of his calm and cool exterior. And even though he was a bit worried, it was not enough. Not enough for all that Sarah was forced to endure.
I just could not understand their relationship due to this.
Yeah, due to that, which ironically had nothing to do with him being an alien.
At some points, especially towards the end, I honestly wanted her to end up with Sam because at least HE cared! At least HE was horrified and worried and would have DONE something to HELP her if he KNEW.
(some serious spoilers ahead)
As for our love interest, who just stood by and waited for far too long. Yes, I understand you couldn't reach earth sooner than that but you SHOULD NEVER HAVE LEFT HER THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. I don't CARE how much she refused or begged you to go and leave her behind, YOU KNEW what would happen to her, YOU KNEW. And I hardly saw you in enough pain over this yourself, so please, Sandford, just go away.
I mean seriously, Lan from Land of the Beautiful Dead did some... really stupid, reckless, crazy things, but not for a moment did Azrael just stood aside and did nothing. Azrael would have NEVER left her behind, no matter how much she begged him to. He would have fought for her. And that's something Sandford simply did not do.
He didn't fight for her.
SHE, however, fought for him. She bled for him, broke for him, gave everything up for him.
And I'm sorry, but that just ruins everything for me.
In a relationship, whatever its nature, you have to fight for each other.
If one side fights while the other does nothing... is it even a relationship at all?
I had to applaud and wanted to hug Sam when he shoved all of this in Safndord's face after seeing the condition Sarah was in.
God, she should have ended up with Sam.
Even T'aki was more worried and insistent.
So yeah, all of that just really... annoyed me. And that's why I could not enjoy this book as much as I wanted to.
That being said, I would still give the author's other books a try because... well because, Land of the Beautiful Dead was one of the best things ever.
Looking forward to jumping into The Last Hours of Gann!
By no means this was a bad book, I just...
Maybe my expectations were too high, after reading Land of the Beautiful Dead by this author, and absolutely loving it.
But honestly? I think this book fell short for me for two reasons that just really irked me throughout it all.
It wasn't the writing style (which was just as amazing), it wasn't the world-building (which was great), it wasn't even the protagonist herself, Sarah (despite me not really understanding her overwhelming kindness), it was (some mild spoilers ahead):
Was this book about, how to physically torture the protagonist every few chapters or so to the point where you break her bones, cut her fingers off, and beat her near death? Because if so! Wow, success! I tell you, success!
What the heck?
No seriously, WHAT the heck?
It's not that I do not expect some kind of torture in those type of dark reads. In this book, however, it was to the point of madness. And pointlessness. It was like the protagonist's sole purpose was to get beaten up and tortured. And it was just... I couldn't even be horrified - although I was - because I was too busy wondering "is there a point to this meaningless pain?" No, there was no point except for her to be in pain throughout all of this book, be it emotional or physical.
And for what?
Nothing at all.
Not even for her beloved to rescue her (on time, even), hug her, avenge her, DO SOMETHING that isn't letting her constantly be beaten up emotionally and physically. Nope, he just sat aside in all of his calm and cool exterior. And even though he was a bit worried, it was not enough. Not enough for all that Sarah was forced to endure.
I just could not understand their relationship due to this.
Yeah, due to that, which ironically had nothing to do with him being an alien.
At some points, especially towards the end, I honestly wanted her to end up with Sam because at least HE cared! At least HE was horrified and worried and would have DONE something to HELP her if he KNEW.
(some serious spoilers ahead)
As for our love interest, who just stood by and waited for far too long. Yes, I understand you couldn't reach earth sooner than that but you SHOULD NEVER HAVE LEFT HER THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. I don't CARE how much she refused or begged you to go and leave her behind, YOU KNEW what would happen to her, YOU KNEW. And I hardly saw you in enough pain over this yourself, so please, Sandford, just go away.
I mean seriously, Lan from Land of the Beautiful Dead did some... really stupid, reckless, crazy things, but not for a moment did Azrael just stood aside and did nothing. Azrael would have NEVER left her behind, no matter how much she begged him to. He would have fought for her. And that's something Sandford simply did not do.
He didn't fight for her.
SHE, however, fought for him. She bled for him, broke for him, gave everything up for him.
And I'm sorry, but that just ruins everything for me.
In a relationship, whatever its nature, you have to fight for each other.
If one side fights while the other does nothing... is it even a relationship at all?
I had to applaud and wanted to hug Sam when he shoved all of this in Safndord's face after seeing the condition Sarah was in.
God, she should have ended up with Sam.
Even T'aki was more worried and insistent.
So yeah, all of that just really... annoyed me. And that's why I could not enjoy this book as much as I wanted to.
That being said, I would still give the author's other books a try because... well because, Land of the Beautiful Dead was one of the best things ever.
Looking forward to jumping into The Last Hours of Gann!
April 14, 2018
I’ve been on a sci-fi romance kick lately and this one showed up in my Goodreads recommendations with a pretty high average rating. I was intrigued because this the same author who wrote The Last Hour of Gann, which I found riveting. The only thing holding me back: roaches. (DON’T CLICK AWAY!!)
If you’re familiar with Gann, you know the alien hero in that book is a lizardman and that was enough to swallow. Here, the alien hero is a roachman and that might be the single unsexist thing I’ve ever heard of in my life. So I read a bunch of reviews. I stewed on it, then I bought the book. And it was so very good.
The roach thing is real, and the author never lets you forget about it. The thing is, even though I find no living thing as disgusting as a roach, I not only adored this hero, I rooted for the romance 1000%. That is some pretty amazing character building, folks.
The heroine here is Sarah, a down-on-her-luck 20-something with chronic unemployment and an unconscious habit of singing all the time. She thinks she’s finally found her calling when some new jobs open up as caseworkers for the aliens at Cottonwood, the camp where they’re housed. No one outside of the camps know much about the species, even though they landed on Earth 20 years before. They’ve been totally segregated and Sarah loves the idea of being a liaison to help them integrate into the human population.
She learns quickly that’s not what the camp is about. The conditions are terrible; the handlers are cruel. Still, she holds on to her convictions, trying to help the aliens who have every reason to hate her kind.
Samson is one of her clients. Right away, she’s taken by his adorable son and the two strike up an unlikely friendship. Samson’s only goal is to free his people to get them back home, but he sees something special in Sarah and can’t bring himself to view her through the same lens as the humans around her.
Like Gann, this is tough reading. No doubt, humans are the villains here. The military guys at the camp do terrible things… and not just to the “bugs,” but to Sarah once they realize her sympathies. There’s no rape here, but the abuse levels are pretty hard-core.
The romance is a super-slow burn—because, yeah, the hero is a roachman—but the emotional connection feels reasonable and true. I had so many feels, and somehow I wasn’t even grossed out by the sex.
If you can’t get past the bug thing, I totally get it. But if you like this genre… if you liked Gann… I highly encourage you to try this one too. I didn’t want to put it down.
Rating: A
If you’re familiar with Gann, you know the alien hero in that book is a lizardman and that was enough to swallow. Here, the alien hero is a roachman and that might be the single unsexist thing I’ve ever heard of in my life. So I read a bunch of reviews. I stewed on it, then I bought the book. And it was so very good.
The roach thing is real, and the author never lets you forget about it. The thing is, even though I find no living thing as disgusting as a roach, I not only adored this hero, I rooted for the romance 1000%. That is some pretty amazing character building, folks.
The heroine here is Sarah, a down-on-her-luck 20-something with chronic unemployment and an unconscious habit of singing all the time. She thinks she’s finally found her calling when some new jobs open up as caseworkers for the aliens at Cottonwood, the camp where they’re housed. No one outside of the camps know much about the species, even though they landed on Earth 20 years before. They’ve been totally segregated and Sarah loves the idea of being a liaison to help them integrate into the human population.
She learns quickly that’s not what the camp is about. The conditions are terrible; the handlers are cruel. Still, she holds on to her convictions, trying to help the aliens who have every reason to hate her kind.
Samson is one of her clients. Right away, she’s taken by his adorable son and the two strike up an unlikely friendship. Samson’s only goal is to free his people to get them back home, but he sees something special in Sarah and can’t bring himself to view her through the same lens as the humans around her.
Like Gann, this is tough reading. No doubt, humans are the villains here. The military guys at the camp do terrible things… and not just to the “bugs,” but to Sarah once they realize her sympathies. There’s no rape here, but the abuse levels are pretty hard-core.
The romance is a super-slow burn—because, yeah, the hero is a roachman—but the emotional connection feels reasonable and true. I had so many feels, and somehow I wasn’t even grossed out by the sex.
If you can’t get past the bug thing, I totally get it. But if you like this genre… if you liked Gann… I highly encourage you to try this one too. I didn’t want to put it down.
Rating: A
January 24, 2014
Cottonwood is another one of RLS’s well paced novels that manages to engage the reader and keep the interest going. As I’ve come to rely on with her writing, this story had me hooked.
This was not as long of a read as LHoG and Heat was They. Are. Long. ) but like the ones before the story practically jumps along with very little pause, and it’s the characters themselves that help this book stand out (and stand out it does).
When it comes to RLS’s heroines, they fail to disappoint me (no simpering damsels in distress here) and continue to live up to my expectations. I often find myself cheering them on while they fight the bad guys (human and alien alike) & this book is no exception. Sarah is a heroine that is strong, self-sufficient (though she can’t see that for herself) and beyond courageous (could I have stepped up and did what she did...even just ONE thing?).
Every chapter is unlike the chapter before...And when you are coming up to the final chapters, you don’t want to read them because you don’t want the story to end! It’s simply super! with bags of atmosphere. It is yet another novel written by R Lee Smith that I have no hesitation in recommending.
This was not as long of a read as LHoG and Heat was They. Are. Long. ) but like the ones before the story practically jumps along with very little pause, and it’s the characters themselves that help this book stand out (and stand out it does).
When it comes to RLS’s heroines, they fail to disappoint me (no simpering damsels in distress here) and continue to live up to my expectations. I often find myself cheering them on while they fight the bad guys (human and alien alike) & this book is no exception. Sarah is a heroine that is strong, self-sufficient (though she can’t see that for herself) and beyond courageous (could I have stepped up and did what she did...even just ONE thing?).
Every chapter is unlike the chapter before...And when you are coming up to the final chapters, you don’t want to read them because you don’t want the story to end! It’s simply super! with bags of atmosphere. It is yet another novel written by R Lee Smith that I have no hesitation in recommending.
June 23, 2023
I’m coming back to edit my review because I often find myself thinking back to this book.
If the ending half of the book had been different this could’ve easily have been a 5 star read for me.
Spoilers,duh- it’s marked as such.
The MMC LEAVES THE FMC BEHIND. Because she told him to save someone else instead of her, AND HE DOES SAVE SOMEONE ELSE AND SHES LEFT BEHIND, TORTURED FOR YEARS.
YEARS.
She’s barely recognizable by the time they get around to going back for her. YEARS.
The FMC was not at fault for the wrong things the government were doing to the MMC’s kind, she wanted to help. She goes through so much, they kill her dog 😭
She’s basically a punching bag.
It’s not pretty, it’s descriptive, there’s no flowery words here to cover up the shit she goes through. TO GIVE HER AN MMC WHO LEAVES HER BEHIND?
😤. I’m mad all over again.
I remember I stayed up super late to read this only to be crushed by how the ending played out. Sure they get her back AFTER YEARS OF TORTURE, they fix her up with their machine ( I remember the other dude was pissed, he was an asshole but at least he showed emotions towards her, he had more potential of being a better MMC ) our MMC here seems to barely have any emotions at all 🙄🙄🙄
Was there guilt for leaving her behind ? No. I hate this so much.
My ratings always reflect my enjoyment of the story. ❀
If the ending half of the book had been different this could’ve easily have been a 5 star read for me.
Spoilers,duh- it’s marked as such.
The MMC LEAVES THE FMC BEHIND. Because she told him to save someone else instead of her, AND HE DOES SAVE SOMEONE ELSE AND SHES LEFT BEHIND, TORTURED FOR YEARS.
YEARS.
She’s barely recognizable by the time they get around to going back for her. YEARS.
The FMC was not at fault for the wrong things the government were doing to the MMC’s kind, she wanted to help. She goes through so much, they kill her dog 😭
She’s basically a punching bag.
It’s not pretty, it’s descriptive, there’s no flowery words here to cover up the shit she goes through. TO GIVE HER AN MMC WHO LEAVES HER BEHIND?
😤. I’m mad all over again.
I remember I stayed up super late to read this only to be crushed by how the ending played out. Sure they get her back AFTER YEARS OF TORTURE, they fix her up with their machine ( I remember the other dude was pissed, he was an asshole but at least he showed emotions towards her, he had more potential of being a better MMC ) our MMC here seems to barely have any emotions at all 🙄🙄🙄
Was there guilt for leaving her behind ? No. I hate this so much.
My ratings always reflect my enjoyment of the story. ❀
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 11, 2013
A well written but totally depressing story—-aliens (called Bugs)have landed on earth due to mechanical failure of their space ship—they are rounded up and made to live in what amounts to concentration camps (Cottonwood being one of the camps)--sweet Sarah works to save the aliens—evil human Van Meyer tortures and kills them---
Read at your own risk
Read at your own risk
July 3, 2023
I just want to make it clear this book made me bawl and that never happens and never in my ADULT LIFE HAVE I read a love story like thisssss - r lee smith is an automatic 5 star for me okiee bye
September 20, 2024
“They were never meant to come to Earth. They were never allowed to leave…”
I thought R. Lee Smith had tapped into all my feelings when I read her book Land of the Beautiful Dead, but reading Cottonwood has made me realize that Smith is nowhere near done with me. I never saw myself picking up a romance between an ant-like alien man and a human woman, but here I am. And it’s now one of my favorite books of all time.
If I attempted to describe Cottonwood in a few simple words, I would say that it’s best described as an erotic sci-fi romance with horror elements, reminiscent of the movie, ‘District 9.’
“His family on yang’Tak had ceased to exist; they offered him no hope, no sense of purpose. Earth’s reality had killed that memory and all he had was here, and it was Hell.”
The two love interests could not be more different, and Smith shows you a myriad of reasons why this unnatural pairing should not work. But, that’s the beauty of her writing – I found myself desperate for more, clinging to every subtle moment I could get. The heartfelt connection between Sanford and Sarah was a beautiful thing to unfold. I’ll remember their love for a long time.
“I am your air, your heart. I drink water from your hands. You bare your back to me.” He spoke softer now, but with growing intensity, the words vibrating from his chest-plate to her breast. “Your voice is the secret sounding of my name. I give my unprotected skin to your touch. I am always in you. You are always with me.”
It’s nearly impossible for the reader not to make parallels between what transpires in Cottonwood and other atrocities in human history. The story has political undertones, but the reader is not shown a clear “right” answer on which species is best. Now that I’ve read two of Smith’s books, I’ve found that her storytelling is nothing short of provocative, leaving me to ruminate on its profound messages long after I’ve finished her work.
“You are doing,” he said, sternly now, “the best you can. And biting at your hands for what they can’t carry achieves nothing.”
“If they can do this to their own kind, what hope is there for us?”
Smith does not rely on shock value to convey bleak despondency. Moments worth pausing for are done with utmost respect for the characters. Her writing has made me feel more deeply than many authors have been able to. It's barbaric beauty.
In essence, this book made me feel overwhelming sadness, grief, longing, happiness, agony, despair, and hope. I also lived for the short moments of humor that Smith expertly placed into the story. It’s going to live in my heart for a long time. If you’re looking for a story to captivate you from the moment you open it, to long after you turn the final page, look no further than Cottonwood.
“I am you and you are me.”
P.S. If there was ever a side character I was desperate to have a spin-off book written for, it’s Samaritan. I adore that hilarious, menacing asshole.
You can check out my aesthetic reel here!
I thought R. Lee Smith had tapped into all my feelings when I read her book Land of the Beautiful Dead, but reading Cottonwood has made me realize that Smith is nowhere near done with me. I never saw myself picking up a romance between an ant-like alien man and a human woman, but here I am. And it’s now one of my favorite books of all time.
If I attempted to describe Cottonwood in a few simple words, I would say that it’s best described as an erotic sci-fi romance with horror elements, reminiscent of the movie, ‘District 9.’
“His family on yang’Tak had ceased to exist; they offered him no hope, no sense of purpose. Earth’s reality had killed that memory and all he had was here, and it was Hell.”
The two love interests could not be more different, and Smith shows you a myriad of reasons why this unnatural pairing should not work. But, that’s the beauty of her writing – I found myself desperate for more, clinging to every subtle moment I could get. The heartfelt connection between Sanford and Sarah was a beautiful thing to unfold. I’ll remember their love for a long time.
“I am your air, your heart. I drink water from your hands. You bare your back to me.” He spoke softer now, but with growing intensity, the words vibrating from his chest-plate to her breast. “Your voice is the secret sounding of my name. I give my unprotected skin to your touch. I am always in you. You are always with me.”
It’s nearly impossible for the reader not to make parallels between what transpires in Cottonwood and other atrocities in human history. The story has political undertones, but the reader is not shown a clear “right” answer on which species is best. Now that I’ve read two of Smith’s books, I’ve found that her storytelling is nothing short of provocative, leaving me to ruminate on its profound messages long after I’ve finished her work.
“You are doing,” he said, sternly now, “the best you can. And biting at your hands for what they can’t carry achieves nothing.”
“If they can do this to their own kind, what hope is there for us?”
Smith does not rely on shock value to convey bleak despondency. Moments worth pausing for are done with utmost respect for the characters. Her writing has made me feel more deeply than many authors have been able to. It's barbaric beauty.
In essence, this book made me feel overwhelming sadness, grief, longing, happiness, agony, despair, and hope. I also lived for the short moments of humor that Smith expertly placed into the story. It’s going to live in my heart for a long time. If you’re looking for a story to captivate you from the moment you open it, to long after you turn the final page, look no further than Cottonwood.
“I am you and you are me.”
P.S. If there was ever a side character I was desperate to have a spin-off book written for, it’s Samaritan. I adore that hilarious, menacing asshole.
You can check out my aesthetic reel here!
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