CONTENT WARNINGS: Physical assault, murder, heavy religious themes (specially Christianity), violence, hospitalization
I will not go into specific detail on these topics, but they may be mentioned in this review. These themes/instances are unavoidable in the book
Rating: 1/5
Do you ever pick up a book, excited in the idea behind it and immediately get the ick when you read about the author? And have the ick influence the reading, which also reinforces it? Enter Mind Invaders by Dave Hunt.
The bones of the story are your typical enjoyable sci-fi romp: We’ve made contact with aliens, we think/hope they’re good guys. Turns out not really. Only one person knows the truth, and no one believes them. Sprinkle in a Cold War setting where Russia and the US both come across them at the same time for some extra drama. Light romance, little boy saves girl action.
Simple, a little predictable, easy read. We love to see an easy 3.5/4 star read just for tropes. Right? Wrong. So very wrong.
Dave Hunt was a big C Christian writer, and specifically writes Christian fiction. I have a religious studies undergrad, and I love to see people use their faith to guide and influence their work, so at first I was exited at the idea of a heaven and hell approach with some devilish aliens. But, Hunt was a Christian apologist who literally has information about his ministry in the back of his novel. Dude was laying it on thick here.
I haven’t read enough Christian Spiritual fiction to know its tropes and what to expect, I’ll admit that. But the straight white male savior complex is so strong in this book. The main character is as flat as he is dogmatic. Every time we returned to him he was sermonizing. I won’t argue if it was convincing or not, but it became his entire personality and the only way the world could be saved.
And that’s not to even start on that romantic subplot. The boy saves girl? Cringing the whole way down. If the main male character is flat, the female character is a straight line. She is eve in the garden, her alluring words as a reporter helping spread the word of the devil. Oh but of course she accepts Christ and is redeemed in the end because no one ends up a good guy can be anything but born again.
But, I don’t want to rip too hard into the characters without touching on how they’re written. Now, I’m no award winner. I’m not even published, so take this with a grain of salt: the book just isn’t well written. Every third line of dialogue seems to have an exclamation point, for no reason, so every character is constantly shouting, And no one ever seems to be talking to one another, just at or in the general vicinity of one another. Also, the tension starts too high to really give things anywhere to move. When you open with “the aliens are the devil and are going to take over world!” and don’t let us discover it on our own, it feels dull.
Honestly, I really did want to like this, and with just how general the concept was, I can likely find another way it’s been approached.
Macabress Manuscripts 