“Among Us,” by Kristina Rienzi

There’s something particularly appealing to me about reading (in this case listening to, ably read by Lewis Arlt) a novel by a female: great characterization. It’s sadly lacking in a lot of science fiction, where the male author is much more interested in technology, or space exploration, or things having to do with the warp and weft of time and space. All the above are interesting, but the latter are made even more engaging when we have fully dimensional characters, as we have in Kristina Rienzi’s novel.

This is a UFO story, which I love because I firmly believe there are, and have been, earthly visitations from outer spacelings for a long time. How else can we explain the unexplainable, whether in reality or in our preconscious imaginations? [Note: if you like this genre, the recent movie “UFO,” brilliantly written and directed by Ryan Eslinger, is a must-see – it’s streaming on Netflix.] [You might also want to follow Matty “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” Roberts, a musical-festival-cum-raid scheduled for Sept. 20]

At its core, Rienzi’s is a don’t-mess-with-the-government story. Marci Simon, a rather unconventional woman, finds her world slamming doors of all kinds in her face after she blogs about seeing an other-world alien spacecraft which she and many others, including a retired Air Force officer whose her neighbor across the street, can verify. The good old government begins taking any and all means necessary to quash the sighting — and the people who know of it.

The story is like a vortex that gets deeper, wider, wound up tighter and tighter, as it unfolds. We are cast into Marci’s world where we empathize deeply with the tribuiations and confusion she experiences, while simultaneously having every last one of our worst fears about our corrupt, secretive, we-the-people-hating government confirmed.

As I removed my EarPods, I recall thinking, “Boy, it’s good thing Edward Snowden split for Russia!”