Review: Alien and Grieving Widow Short Story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 9, 2012
This is a short novella only about 100 pages in length.SYNOPSIS:A widow who has drowned her grief and isolation in work, takes her first vacation in years.  When she drives up to her rented desolate cabin, she finds a hunky naked he-man alien in the center of a smoking crater.  He was unjustly exiled to Earth by a vicious criminal, and must return to his home planet to reassure his family that he is not a killer and stop the real murderer from striking again.The alien comes from a planet where magic is organic and ordinary, but our technology baffles him.  The widow helps him, they fall for each other (several times!), making their own magic, and cue happy ending.IMO:I'm a big Butcher fan, so this falls under the category of "I'll buy anything she publishes", but it's not one of her best works.  It's well written and paced, but the romance lacks a `spark', one of those `I don't know what' things that make a short story stand out. However, the suspense aspect was nice and worth the time to read it.  Butcher is always good.  Sometimes a story is just a 2nd base hit and not a home run, but it's still worth staying in the game right?  So buy the novella and enjoy.