The Alien Diaries takes a refreshingly different look at alien contact with a story that jumps seamlessly from today back to 1781, during the tail end of the Revolutionary War in Virginia. Asher hires widower bookseller Colin to catalog the collection in the Dibble estate that date back to the late 1700s, and sends him a couple first editions and a few pages of a diary to whet his appetite for the work. Colin realizes the assignment is odd – for one thing Asher paid off the mortgages on his home and business as a gift – but does not realize exactly how odd, or how dangerous.
Asher insists that Colin and his nominal supervisor Maddy wear 18th century clothing at all times and hide any evidence of modern equipment. They are both intrigued by the anomalies on the estate: Running water, electric lights, rudimentary air conditioning and central heating, indoor plumbing, refrigeration, but Maddy acts the hard-nosed supervisor and forbids from exploring and investigating until he finishes cataloging the book collection.
The diary from Kate Dibble, Mary and Dibble’s adopted daughter, gives the framework for the 1781 story. An enslaved alien sought refuge with the Dibbles, his owners hunted him down. Now, in 2018, the owners have returned and still hunt their escapee. Colin and Maddy face terrifying events; they are unable to leave the estate and no one can see or hear them.
Good Points
Plot is intriguing, unusual and the story is self-contained, with a beginning, middle and solid end.
Characters are well done, especially those from 1781. The modern pair of are somewhat less developed but we see enough to like. We suspect the two will end up together but the romance is secondary.
Author Glenn Devlin does an excellent job moving between times. We are not confused as to which group we are with and the events of the past clearly define the events today.
So-So Points
There are plot holes. Couple examples:
- How does James communicate with the aliens in our modern time to arrange the 2018 events?
- Why have the winged aliens not attacked Earth? We would be pushovers and clearly they have known about us for at least 2500 years.
There are editing problems, missing words, so on. Also, does not anyone use the irregular past tense anymore for shine/shone or dive/dove?
The biggest problem with the novel is it bogs down about the 40% mark. I kept reading because I was curious what was going on with the mysterious Dibbles, but the book itself crept along. There is a comment on Amazon that Alien Diaries “was a finalist during Amazon’s monthly screenwriting competition” so perhaps what felt like doldrums in a novel would be more lively in a movie.
Overall
I liked the novel and read to the end and appreciated the skill with which author Devlin mixed the 1780s into 2018. It’s not quite 4 stars, perhaps 3 1/2.
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Very thorough review! I was trying to decide whether to read this, and you helped me a lot.