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The Intergalactic Interloper by Delas Heras: book review






The Intergalactic Interloper (2020) is set in New York City in 1995. 

 

An alien vessel lands on the roof of a New York building in the shape of a water tower. In the command chair sits a turtle-like creature with two heads. It has scaly skin, four yellow eyes, four arms, and two long antennae protruding from its bald skulls. 

 

The extraterrestrial’s name is AxzleProva: Axzle is the male head and Prova is the female head. AxzleProva is cautious, venturing out of its space ship only at night to do its job for the Amalgamation: to identify intelligent life on planet Earth, according to specific criteria. 

 

Ollie works in a bookstore and is a musician, a guitarist, living in his tiny New York studio. He hears something crashing down onto the rooftop. In a panic, he searches for his cat Pirate.

 

It was regrettable that AxzleProva had been ‘conspicuously visible to that human male [Ollie] for a brief moment.’ Ollie, on the other hand, was trying to make sense of what he had just seen. 

 

Ollie tells his band-mates Wally and Miguel about his encounter with a space turtle. Of course they don’t believe him. 

 

The singer in the band is Zara who works in an animal hospital while studying to be a vet. She helps Ollie look for Pirate the missing cat.

 

Handyman Manolo is making his regular inspection of the water tower on the roof of a building, but he stops just before going to the roof. His sixth sense told him to stay away. Retired Mrs Nora Butler is president of the New York branch of Bird Watchers of America. She was looking through her binoculars when she saw something strange on the roof of a building. They weren’t the only ones who had noticed a two-headed creature on a roof. 

 

Now that the space ship’s position is compromised, and earth beings know that there is an ET on a roof, what is AxzleProva going to do?  Oops, things don’t go quite as planned. 

 

This novella is a brief, easy, and quick read. It doesn’t develop characters well, keeping them fairly superficial. Nevertheless, they are a delightful bunch of bohemian New Yorkers. 







 

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

  

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