From Publishers Weekly
Fact into fiction? In bestseller Strieber's engrossing SF thriller, which draws heavily from Communion (1987), the author's controversial account of his personal contact with aliens, Danny and Katelyn Callaghan are a happily married couple oblivious that both took a saucer ride as kidsΠ²Πβuntil a UFO sighting in their Indiana town awakens subliminal memories and excites their genius teenage son, Conner. Meanwhile, in a secret facility in Colorado, Air Force Lt. Lauren Glass learns that the Roswell incident really happened, and that for decades the surviving ETs have been sharing their advanced science with us. In exchange, these "Grays" have sought to rejuvenate their dying species by genetically manipulating human receptacles for their DNA. But some military hard-liners see this as a betrayal of humanity, and they launch a manhunt that brings them to Indiana and the Callaghans' doorstep. Though Strieber's human characters are sometimes as stiff and unbelievable as his Grays, his depiction of black ops intrigue and military espionage is a first-rate exercise in literary paranoia. It goes without saying that his abduction scenarios have a disturbing authenticity that even skeptical readers will find provocative. (Aug.)
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From Booklist
In 1985, Strieber, then a top horror writer, author of The Wolfen 1978) and The Hunger (1981), had an alien-abduction experience. The book he wrote about it, Communion (1987), was so successful that his output of fiction dwindled in the 1990s as he expanded upon his biggest best-seller. Stillborn sequels to The Hunger emerged in 2001 and 2002, but The Grays is a quantum leap back to his fictional form, powered by his newer, nonfiction obsessions. In it aliens--the grays--have been with humanity for a good, long time, for excellent reasons. They've been helping humanity avoid their mistakes, which destroyed their emotions. Now, after a several-million-years journey, the rest of the grays, for whom those among us were pioneers with a purpose, are nearing Earth. Measures crucial to their success have been set in motion, most important among them, the creation of a human child of supernormal intelligence to receive the grays' advanced knowledge. Trouble is, hints of the child's existence had to be made to humans with authority; hence, the Roswell business. And hence, the development of rival factions within the top-secret military operation that guards the Roswell aliens. Strieber manages the plot built on those premises as a breakneck race to find the child and, depending on which faction the characters belong to, protect or destroy it. It's a terrific read, already blocked out like a screenplay for the major movie now in the works, marred only by a few treacly passages about the wonder of it all. Ray Olson
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