Book Review – Roadkill by Dennis E. Taylor

Having, at the time of this review, read half the Bobiverse series by Taylor, I’ve enjoyed his mix of science fiction and levity to bring joy into the genre. Sure, darkness and bleakness of the emptiness of space or alien invasion or corrupt governments (but I repeat myself) are enjoyable staples but sometimes I want to have fun in my sci-fi. So what better way than to start off our story about a plot of a secret alien invasion scheme than our main character running over an invisible alien?

Jack and his friends, Natalie and Patrick end up teaming up with an alien ship AI (Sheldon) to uncover the secret alien plot in line to something akin to They Live. Taylor again uses the need to exposition dump as a scientific method thinking process by our bright trio group. This similar style of thinking out the problem, hypothesis, experimentation, follow-up questions, analysis, and conclusion sometimes works and sometimes fails. It moves the plot forward while having this information move with the story. And here, the information learned is really good and plausible for alien species. There isn’t a groundbreaking revelation of alien life but it follows a logical frameset that grounds the sci-fi.

Here’s where I believe the story faulters – in two categories. Taylor’s dry and fun sarcastic tone from the Bobiverse series is enjoyable and endears the characters to the reader. With Sheldon as our AI character, he’s just your typical “stupid humans” for far too much of it without the moments of genuine humor or warm care that would endear him to the reader. He’s helpful and intelligent but when his humor is more annoying, even to the characters in the story, it’s hard to believe that our characters would grow so close to Sheldon. The second issue is that the book is almost too short to leave enough time to figure everything out along with attempting to thwart an alien invasion and having both successes and failures along the way. For example, there is a “conspiracy UFO nut” who is brought up and quickly discarded never to be seen again. Then from the time of uncovering the movers behind the conspiracy to the end is really quick that the drama tends to get lost and the action moves a lot quicker. This front-loads the book with our characters figuring things out at a slower rate than the rest of the story unfolding at the end.

However, I would not say that I didn’t enjoy this book because I did. I still liked Taylor’s writing and his normal, slightly above-intelligent characters who succeed and fail in their efforts to learn the new world around them and to react to the different plot points. It is also nice to know that you can have a book in this day and age be a one-shot novel rather than a 12-part expanded universe with two different threads and the author doesn’t finish it or know how to. If you like Taylor’s other writing you will most likely will like this. If this is where you want to start with Taylor’s work, just start with the first Bobiverse novel first. If you’re just wanting to check out the story because it’s about an alien plot to take over the world discovered after accidentally having a way-to-close encounter with an alien and the hood of a truck – check it out.