THE BLUE, BEAUTIFUL WORLD

A tale of hidden aliens and first contact on an Earth in crisis.

In the near future, Owen (famous enough for one name only) is the biggest pop star in the world. Owen’s overwhelming appeal is something more than just charisma, though, as it’s slowly revealed that he and members of his entourage are visitors from another planet, watching as Earth struggles with climate change and population collapse. Virtual reality is everywhere, both as entertainment and as thin fabric masks people use to disguise their identities (alien and human alike). More than a decade later, Kanoa Havili is a student representing the Federated States of Polynesia in Havana at a World Council Global Government Project, akin to a Model U.N. With his fellow students from around the planet, they’re given a challenge to solve—what if an extraterrestrial civilization came to Earth?—but in the midst of working this out, it’s revealed that everything they’ve been studying is real. Now Kanoa and friends have to navigate a first-contact situation with a powerful ally on their side: Owen. Unfortunately, other than a thin character list buried at the back, readers are given no indication that this book takes place in the larger universe of Lord’s Cygnus Beta series, and as a result, the book reads like overly long fan fiction of a show you’ve never heard of. This wouldn’t be an issue if it were better written, with some deft recapping woven into the narrative, but instead, readers have to try to piece together who’s an alien, who’s not, and who all these other civilizations are. Meanwhile, the book is glutted with secondary characters, adding little to the story besides confusion, and offers some cringey adolescent sentences like “His look varied from the delicate, waiflike freshness of a teen idol to the grizzled, whipcord-and-washboard toughness of a decades-seasoned rock star…” or “The salt breeze in intermittent puffs like shy kisses, telling a lie of warmth that the sea would soon dispel.”

An intergalactic fumble.