Book Review: Alien Hunters, by Daniel Arenson

After trying to get through a very slow fantasy novel, this story is just what I needed.  Alien Hunters is a fun, light, action filled and interesting novel.  I came across this on Amazon as a "free" kindle download, so I took a chance on it.  I'd never heard of this author before, and I don't believe I have ever seen any of his books at the book store (seems to be the case for many authors these days).  But, it is hard to argue with "free" - the only cost is an investment of time.

I am very glad I took a chance on it, but the book isn't quite what I was expecting.  From the title, I was thinking this might be a story of bounty hunters, or tough Han Solo types hunting down rogue aliens (at the time I downloaded it, I was anxiously awaiting the SyFy Channel show Hunters, based on Whitley Strieber's Alien Hunter series of books, which ended up not being very good - no, I haven't read the books).  Boy, was I wrong!  The blurb on Amazon revealed that the Alien Hunters handle "small critters", so they are really along the lines of a pest control team (I didn't read this fully when I downloaded it).

The general story is similar to other stories you may have read.  Riff Starfire doesn't care about much except his music, he is estranged from his family, lost the love of his life years ago, and is barely getting by.  And then, in the tradition of Star Wars, he gets unexpectedly pulled into an adventure that he cannot avoid.  All of a sudden, he is running for his life, and ends up the Captain of an old ship with a crew of alien hunters.  In the course of the story, they get involved a potential invasion from the alien skelkrin.  I will also say that the whole "alien hunters" concept contains a surprise or two.

The crew is an interesting mix of humans, human-derivatives, and one non-human.  By human-derivative, I mean humans who colonized another planet with higher or lower gravity, and other different elements, the ultimately changed the human form slightly.  I will say that the non-human character is quite interesting, and I'm very curious about their origin.  By its very nature, the character seems somewhat out of place in a space opera style novel, and I have to say that the characters personality seems somewhat familiar to me, but I'm not sure why.  I won't reveal more, so you'll just have to read the book.

This story reminded me very much of the books of Alan Dean Foster, most of which I read during the years 1980 - 1990.  Simply put, a good adventure story in the form of the original Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers TV shows (meaning that the story is a good mix of action, interesting character interactions, humor, and not too heavy - unlike the Battlestar Galactica remake which started in 2004, which was really a drama).  I would also liken the style of the story to the movies The Last Starfighter and Krull (interestingly, Alan Dean Foster wrote the novelizations of these films as well).  I wonder the author drew inspiration from these sources.

If you are looking for a light and fun book, with hopefully more of the same in the rest of the trilogy (which I plan to check out at some point), I recommend this book.