Him: After The UFO Crash

by Koos Verkaik

After the UFO Crash-- A UFO crashes in Florida and the world is suddenly endangered by a deluge of strange coincidences and hordes of murderers. Also from Dutch author, Koos Verkaik, comes his eerie and thrilling science fiction novel, HIM: After the UFO Crash.

Rocket scientist, Arthur Croft, sends a special capsule into space, hoping it will be intercepted by extraterrestrial creatures. Croft has an unshakable belief in the existence of intelligent life in the universe. Then, for no apparent reason, he commits suicide.

Jasper Froch, an American hippie, learns how to control the phenomenon of synchronicity and discovers that strange coincidences lead him in a certain direction. A Swiss psychiatrist asks Jasper to befriend a special mental patient, a rich American by the name of Francis Lockhart. Meanwhile, a UFO crashes in Sanguine, Florida.

215 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 8, 2019

About the author

Koos Verkaik started to write at the age of 7, published his first work (comics, 3 pages each week in a magazine) at the age of 16, his first novel was published at the age of 18.
Over 60 different titles are published now, both in The Netherlands and the USA.
Koos is a master of magic, adventure and mystery, writes many urban fantasy books and children's books.
The publisher for his novels is RIGHTER'S MILL PRESS in Princeton, USA. For film: Three Corners Entertainment, USA.
His new series for children, ALEX AND THE WOLPERTINGER, is published internationally and there will be at least 30 different titles.
Outer Banks Publishing Group, USA, publishes the series of children's books Alex and the Wolpertinger and Saladin the Wonder Horse.

Reviews

[Fred Rayworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

HIM After The UFO Crash was not what I expected. I won’t even delve into what I had in mind. What I will say is that it was mostly in the science fiction camp. It had a slow start, filled with a lot of philosophizing and characterization. Not much action happened, which at times made me wonder whether to continue and what it was all leading to. Also, the writing was a bit different. While it was solid third-person, past-tense, the point of view was not limited. The author head-hopped at will. That made it, at times, hard to keep in the head of some of the characters. Some of the language was also a bit awkward, but I can give that to the translation from Dutch to English.

Despite those writing quirks, overall, somehow, I kept on reading as the prose did not get in the way of the story as much as I expected it to. Another issue was the rather long chapters and scenes, which can also be another pet peeve of mine. Given how short the book was at two hundred and forty-six pages, it should have been a quick read. However, it took me a solid week to get through it. It was dense, yet kept me going just to find out what was going to happen.

There was definitely a fantastical element to it, especially for the time period. I say that because given the state of our American guv’mint at the time, they never would’ve acted the way they did in Koos’s world. I know, because I lived it and it was just too unrealistic. Then again, I suspended my disbelief at the door, just like I do with any good B-movie icky bug. Given that, if I were of a more serious mind, I would’ve been yelling bull at the top of my lungs in several places at the way some of those officials were acting.

Now, I’m a glass is half full type person, so I went along for the ride, and despite all odds, and there were plenty of them, I was happy with this science fiction novel that was just as much at home in the fantasy world. It would almost be considered a better fit as urban fantasy that true science fiction, not because of the UFO storyline, but by the way the US guv’mint officials acted.

Back to the slow development of the story. As I read it, I kept wondering how all these disparate elements would come together. In the end, they all did. All the characterization and philosophizing converged into a decent fairy tale ending. While it took a while to get there, to that end, I was left with a smile on my face, given that I suspended my disbelief at the door. Keep that in mind and then I can recommend this tale as well worth it.