Reading Freely

At the end of The Stowaway, the gang formed a psychic link with one another, and then with the alien collective consciousness, in order to create a wormhole to send the villain back home for justice. Unfortunately, at the same they were also all disguised as said villain in order to distract his two monster-minions so said minions would not eat them. In a not-hilarious case of mistaken identity, the wrong man was sent through the wormhole: Alex Manes is now in serious danger of missing his mid-terms. In The Vanished, the gang is suitably upset about this, but it’s not a hugely eventful novel. They go back to the ruins of the Clean Slate Compound to see if there’s anything useful on the the ship, but an unknown car drives them away from the site until the alien kids conjure up a dust storm. When they return, the ship is gone. Like, zoinks, Scoob! They figure there can’t be that many places to hide a big alien ship, and Isabel and Adams’ scattered memories of being mental slaves to the villain indicate that Carlsbad Caverns is the place to go When they arrive, though, they’re in for a surprise — and not the happy “Oooh, we arrived just in time to see the bats fly out” kind. There’s also a little thread of Adam having a growing crush on Liz, which will feature more later. There IS an actual cover design for this one in the same style as the originals, but I don’t think it ever got printed.

Moving on to The Rebel. The gang has tried twice to bring Alex back from …where ever (why don’t we have a planet name?), but to no avail. The good news is…he’s back! (Somehow, he returned.) Despite the Consciousness indicating to Max that it will be months before they can try another collaborative attempt with him, Alex has just shown up exhausted and terrified with no memories of his time on Whereever. He beelines for the Evans’ house, both because he loves Isabel and wants to see her, and because Max is The Leader of this little enterprise. Mr. Responsible will figure out what to do. What to do about what? Well….maybe the fact that when Alex was in the wormhole being sent back, he felt a terrifying presence of someone else in pursuit, someone who would kill him to get what they wanted. And what do they want? Well, Alex suddenly has another Stone of Midnight, just like the other one that’s been causing so much trouble. Also, another teenage alien has appeared: Michael’s brother, Trevor! After admitting that he hitched a ride in the wormhole and that he belongs to an underground group on Wherever that hates the Consciousness, a rift forms in the group between those who think Trevor is good people and those who are wary or outright suspicious. On the teen drama side, Max keeps zoning out while being connected to the Consciousness, which distresses Liz: its like he’s not there even when he is there. Interestingly, “phubbing” has allowed everyone to experience this now! The emotional alienation is making her vulnerable to responding to Adam’s puppy crush in kind, but then Maria’s brother is kidnapped by…well, I’ll save that for the next paragraph.

One thing I’ve mentioned about the Roswell High series is that it has three villains whose stories fold into the others: The Dark One features all three, very nearly. The Sheriff was killed, but his son Kyle is out for vengeance and is certain that the kids had something to do with it. Worse yet, he has possession of some Clean Slate tool that can snuff out the aliens’ power usage. The kids are scrambling to figure out how to dispatch the Villain, who now has Trevor helping him — in fact, Trevor came through the wormhole to find the villain, who is the leader of Whatever’s rebellion against the Collective Consciousness. Unfortunately, the kids are in a Hitler vs Stalin situation. The Villain is a monster, sure, but so is the Collective Consciousness — as it proves when Isabel, entering her akino, resists connecting to it. She seeks out Trevor’s help, since he insists that it is possible to survive not connecting — he and the Villain are both not part of the Consciousness — and the Consciousness begins torturing Max and even destroying his body in an effort to force Isabel’s hand. Alex, who was previously distracted by the wormhole making him a babe magnet, rallies after he learns that his beloved Isabel is in trouble. The book ends with the Villain being destroyed, but at a cost: Adam is dead and Max is comatose, a complete captive of the Collective Consciousness.

And finally, we arrive at The Salvation, the series’ conclusion. The kids are free from both the terror of the sheriff and of the Villain (whose name I continue to omit in case anyone decides to read a 27 year old YA book series), but still have to face the fact that Max is a vegetable. He occasionally rises, puppet-like, to demand the Stones of Midnight, but Michael is keeping them well hidden. While everyone tries to think of a plan to destroy the Consciousness, some emotional drama continues. Maria continues to be heartbroken by Michael’s apparent lack of love for her, and this is made worse by the fact that he and Trevor are talking about returning to Wherever after the Consciousness is destroyed. Did Michael talk to anyone about this? Nope. Ultimately the kids find an approach that works, and Michael changes his mind at the last minute and finally tells Maria he loves her. And everyone lived happily ever after, with smooches all around, until the WB decided to make one series that messed the characters up a bit, and then 20 years later made another series that took the characters and threw them in a canon woodchipper.

And that’s the end! This was a fun series to blitz through, and I was intrigued by the little details I’ve remembered over the years. Having watched the first WB series through several times, there was some annoying mental contamination regarding the characters, varying on the character. The books’ Valenti is so cold and evil that it was easy to retain my middle-school image of him, so unlike William Sadler’s depiction of him. I kept hearing Jason Behr talk when Max was active, though, despite the fact that series-Max is far more subdued and popular than book-Max, who is regarded as highly attractive. (Well, all of the aliens are regarded as highly attractive: I suppose that’s part of the hyperadaptability.) One thing the original show did far better than the books is the use of parents: they’re practically nonexistent, almost wholly background here, while in the books Liz and the Evans’ parents play larger roles and there’s a lot of emotional storytelling that comes out of that. Honestly, reading this has made me want to drag out my Roswell DVDs and dive in again. (“If I disappear for a few days, it’s nothing personal. I’ve just been abducted.” used to be my AIM away message…)

Continuing in my Roswell reread.

The Watcher begins pleasantly enough, with relationship drama between the six teens more or less stabilizing. Liz is no longer angry at Max for shying away from a formal relationship on the grounds that it endangers her, Isabel and Alex have become a couple, and Michael and Maria are both getting closer to sorting out their issues. The girls are even bonding looking at one of their classmates’ silly websites, one in which she rates boys on their kissing abilities. But Max…is not doing good. Turns out members of their race bond to the Collective Consciousness during their adolescent period: it joins their mind to all other members of the race, possibly including those who are deceased. If Max doesn’t join the Consciousness, he’ll die. Unfortunately, Earth is too far away from (mystery planet) for Max to join, unless he can use the communication crystals aboard the crashed ship. The gang knows the ship is being held at some Clean Slate Complex, but now they have to not only figure out where the complex is, but find a way to get inside it — and aboard the ship! — without getting shot. The ante has been upped considerably, and when the gang use new powers taught to them by Ray — changing their appearances to mimic guards and even Sheriff Valenti — they descend into the compound and things get even hairier.

The Intruder is a direct sequel to The Watcher: Isabel has returned alone from the Clean Slate compound, as Ray Iburg was shot by the sheriff (not the deputy) and Michael was fighting to give her time to escape with the communication crystals. Once she gets back, relationship matters deteriorate drastically, teen drama wise. Isabella is not taking the presumed capture of Michael well: he has a special place in her heart. Almost like a brother, and yet someone she’s harbored feelings for as well — seeing a …romantic dream of his involving her didn’t help.(If these kids stopped invading one another’s dreams they’d have far fewer issues.) Despite the sudden drama between Alex and Isabel, the gang has to figure out how to work together and help Michael escape the compound. Michael, meanwhile, is being treated fairly well as a prisoner: there’s no torture, just interviews and tests in which he’s encouraged to explore his abilities. There’s also two new faces: Adam, the last incubated baby alien who Ray Iburg couldn’t save back during the crash, and a teenage girl named Cameron. Cameron claims to be captured by Valenti for having psychic powers. Like The Watcher‘s conclusion, The Intruder is heavy on action thrills from its midpoint on.

At the conclusion of The Intruder, there are some bits of good news. Project Clean Slate has been wiped out, and Sheriff Valenti has been immolated with it. The bad news is that the new guy Adam is the one responsible, and he seemed to take sadistic glee in burning Valenti alive and very nearly bringing the roof down on many of the gang’s heads. The sweet summer child appears to have been replaced by a sadistic monster. While the kids keep feeding him sedatives and discussing what to do, plot uncurrents begin happening under their noses. Isabel suddenly starts acting strangely, very much like Adam — violent, and demanding to know where the late Ray Iburg might’ve kept something valuable. Something like…..the Stone of Midnight that caused so much drama in The Seeker. The kids soon realize that there’s another alien on this planet: the criminal who caused the crash didn’t die, but lived, and he’s a nasty piece of work who is perfectly happy to mentally enslave people to make them do his bidding. The kids come up with a plan to deal with him, but it…um, has unexpected consequences.

So, some thoughts on continuing this series: one, there’s more graphic making out scenes in these books than anything I’ve read since, and the action ramps up insanely fast. These kids go from essentially pranking the sheriff to infiltrating top-secret government bases while at the same time juggling relationship drama and hormones. Also, it’s strange that the kids’ homeworld and species are never named.

The scene: a kitchsy diner in Roswell, New Mexico, with a strong “aliens and UFO” theme: the tables are shaped like flying saucers, and the waitresses strut around in Star Trek-esque skirts. Two men at a far table begin arguing, tempers flare, a pistol fires, and a waitress drops to the floor. Instantly, two other teens rush to her aid — both trying to stop the bleeding. One of them, though, is an alien with the ability to manipulate matter. A life is saved, a secret is shared, and a series begins. I mentioned near the start of summer that I intended to re-read Roswell High, a ten-book series I devoured in middle school, and have finished the first three over the weekend.

The Outsider kicks things off when Max Evans risks his and others’ lives to save that of the girl he loves, Liz Ortecho. Max and Liz are lab buddies and friends, and each harbors feelings for the other that they don’t admit even to themselves. Max has an especially good reason for suppressing his feelings: he’s an alien. His first memories were of waking up in an incubation pod with his sister Isabel, each appearing age seven, and climbing out of a cave into the New Mexico desert to wander in confusion until being picked up and effectively adopted by a pair of lawyers. Max and Isabel proved incredibly able to absorb information, learning English quickly and then connecting the story of the “Roswell Crash” to their unusual origin. They also encountered another child like them, Michael Guerin, when they realized he had some of the same superhuman abilities they had — like seeing ‘auras’ around people. But how they came to be hidden in that cave, and why their evidently-dead parents came to Earth to begin with, is a complete unknown.

The Outsider largely deals with Max, Isabel, and Michael’s sudden exposure to Liz and Maria, and then later their friend Alex Manes, and all of the emotional ramification involved. Isabel and Michael are both horrified and angry at Max’s decision to save Liz’s life, not because they dislike her but because of the potential ramifications. The local sheriff, Valenti, is a terrifying spectre already, and he’s very interested in what happened at the diner. He doesn’t buy the story of Liz falling down in shock and accidentally breaking ketchup bottles in the process at all. As we find out, Valenti is a member of Project Clean Slate, a government organization charged with investigating the prospect of aliens on Earth and ….mitigating the threat, shall we say. Valenti is certain an alien was involved at the diner, because Max’s healing left a shining imprint of a hand on her belly — an imprint Valenti has previously seen, at a murder. As the story develops, Michael has a plan to make Valenti think the alien he’s after has died.

With that nice and neat-ish end, we move to The Wild One. In later years I have wondered if The Outsider was intended as a trial of sorts, a pilot, because The Wild One is largely incongruous. I’ve suspected it was written after the publishers realized how popular the first book was, and needed something to fill in the gap while Metz was still developing the overall story of the series. Its premise is simple: another alien teen has arrived, but he’s a Bad Biker Boy. Unlike our trio, he has no fear of humans, and utter contempt for the law or moral norms — and Isabel, who has lived her entire life in fear, is riveted by him. He’s her devil in skin-tight leather, a man as wild as the wind, and Isabel is happy to embrace him despite his disdain for her brother and an outright attack on Liz. Ultimately, The Wild One leads to tragedy and trauma — but contrary to my adult ponderings, The Wild One is fully connected to the rest of the series. Not only does it introduce Ray Iburg, who has a much more important role in the book series than the WB series done later, but the Cool Rider’s ring is the center of the next book.

In The Seeker, we deal largely with teen drama. Although Max and Liz have strong feelings for one another, Max’s concern for Liz’s life prompts him to pull away. Isabel is largely traumatized by the ending of The Wild One, and Alex is there as her human teddybear. Maria and Michael are also developing uncomfortable feelings for one another: Michael is used to seeing Maria as cute and innocent and increasingly unsettled by finding her….well, sexy. Maria, for her part, provides the non-teen drama part of this novel: she found a ring in the mall that appears to have unlocked her innate psychic powers (Maria’s very New Agey). She can use objects — like the sheriff’s pen, say, or Michael’s t-shirt — to “see” what they’re doing. Given the Sheriff’s connection to Clean Slate, she hopes she can use it to help the gang find their parent’s ship, since they’re confident it still exists. The ring — the Stone — is not innocent, however, and as Ray Iburg tells them, it’s connected to the Roswell crash. An object of immense power, it was stolen by a man who later stowed away on the ship to hide, and his discovery lead to the ship losing control. Ray was the sole adult survivor of the crash — that he knows of — and the man responsible for hiding the incubation pods. Ray’s role as mentor will become increasingly important.

Beginning my revisit of this has been fun so far. I’ve mentioned previously that I have a strong sentimental attachment to this series: my best friend and I discovered it together, he lending me the first book, me lending him the second book, and when we got to The Watcher, we buddy-read it on a school bus and talked about it chapter by chapter. I read and re-read the series in my teens, and have a strong affection for the characters. It was also fun to revisit the culture of the 1990s, with the Internet being a thing but of completely marginal relevance to the plot: Alex has a website that sounds a bit like 11points (“because Top Ten Lists are for Cowards”), and that’s it. I noticed a few jokes that I definitely wouldn’t have gotten as a sheltered Pentecostal kid, and enough local references to make me wish I’d read this before visiting Roswell back in 2016.

These books are fairly quick reads, so expect more clump-reviews before long.