Review: A Peculiar Invasion
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 8, 2010
A meteor containing alien life forms hits the small, rural town of Peculiar, MO.  A few Peculiar inhabitants begin experiencing strange dreams and visions.  Animals begin acting wildly.  The lives of several Peculiar residents are linked together in this suspenseful, science fiction novel.I enjoyed this novel because it was suspenseful in parts, had well developed characters and was very well written.For the most part, the book was suspenseful and a page turner.  I had to get to the next page, chapter and definitely had to find out how it all ended!  However, there were some scenes that I felt were too long or drawn out.  This took away from some of the scenes.  I especially felt this way near the end of the book where I think it was filled with too much description.  I felt it was slower-paced with lots of explanation that was not necessary.  That being said, I want to reiterate that there was good suspense and at no point did I want to stop reading or skip to the end.I felt the book was a bit gory.  I expected a science fiction novel but this was a hybrid - mostly science fiction with a few pages of gore.  I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing and I wouldn't take off any stars, but it's just good for a reader to know.  It's now tagged as "horror" as well and I think that tag wasn't there when I purchased the book.I was a little disappointed with Rachel's storyline.  I wanted to know more about her link to the unspeakable crime in the past.  Without giving anything away here, I suppose I expected more resolution on that side story regarding said crime.The characters were great.  I felt connected to all of them and I could empathize with them.  I cared about what happened to them and wanted to see how the story turned out for each and every one of them.  I enjoyed being on an adventure with these characters.  I'd go on another one with them.  I think I would have liked to see Gordon more developed but maybe that was the point - he was supposed to be a bit mysterious.  I enjoyed (for the most part) the character of Rollins.  He was a bit uneven but I liked that.  I liked how the point of view changed.  It wasn't hard to follow and the reader gets to experience the storylines of the different characters.There was a lot of science in the book.  I have no idea if it was accurate or not but there was a lot of scientific description that was way over my head.  Thankfully one of the characters felt the same way :-) so another character regularly  explained the science behind the aliens.  However, it was still a lot for my taste.  All in all, I found the book to be very well written.  Robert Williams is a very talented author and I plan to see what else he has written.