Customer Reviews

The Grays

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

The Grays is a thriller about a young military woman who is assigned to a peculiar and dangerous job, and a boy living in a small college town who is unfortunate enough to receive attention from both strange, sky-dwelling beings and from a military cabal. The loyalties of the young military woman are severely tested as matters of national security collide with matters of human survival.

With unique depictions of threats generated by an alien presence - threats fueled as much by human paranoia as by alien intention - this thriller's spy games are scary and satisfying on many levels. Said to be informed by the real life alien encounters of the author (written of in his 1987 NY Times best-selling book Communion), The Grays is also inspired by the author's passion for environmental responsibility. In an earlier novel he'd written about a terrible leader who tried to avert environmental apocalypse by euthenizing a third of the planet's population. A similar scenario is revisited in The Grays, as politicians conceive of ways to escape from a fate they fear - incorrectly - could end the human race entirely.

This is not a horror novel, though frights come steadily. The underlying horror in the novel is in how Strieber's characters find themselves trapped between the fear of the unknown and the fear of the known - and must make life or death choices in this "gray area". Recommended.

Even though I think the whole UFO thing is ridiculous I enjoyed this book. Say what you want about Whitley Strieber, and I have enjoyed his other books as well, the difference between this story and other far fetched UFO/alien stories is the writer. Whitley Strieber is an excellent writer but he actually believes this UFO stuff so there is added passion in his writing. Kind of like Carl Sagan writing about physics.

Initially expecting a sci-fi cliche with heavy doses of paranoia, this book blew my mind with it's absolutely fascinating ideas. The chapters come fast and furious, and yet each one has a small gem of insight, one that would cause me to shut the book and think about what just happened.

Why do the characters react the way they do? Sometimes afraid, sometimes brilliant, sometimes mindless animals, I realized these are fully-fleshed, real characters that behave the way real people do. Mr. Strieber's insight into human behavior is masterful and lends a heavy realism to the book.

The scenes involving non-humans are both terrifying and mind-blowing. The pages flew by as I was riveted by these scenes, captivated by one surprise after another. I've never read anything like this before, particularly the pages that delve into mind of the non-humans.

The book reads like a spy thriller, though one with a beating, human heart at its core. The book is short, and the large cast of characters barely have enough time to process what's happening, swept away by events and revelations the same way the reader is torn from the mundane by this high-energy dynamo of a novel.

Believer in UFO lore or not, you'll love this book if you love fiction. It's worth the few sleepless nights you'll devote to it.

UFO abductions terrorize a small community and the lives of their unfortunate victims. As the victims of alien abuse attempt to regain control and lead normal lives the government desperately tries to cover-up the truth they have known for decades: aliens live amongst us and are using humans for some unknown purpose.

I have mixed feelings about The Grays. First a few cosmetic problems: I listened to the unabridged audio version and I found the narrator's voice somewhat creepy. His voice is sort of sexless and did not appeal to me. He does a good job narrating the individual characters but his straight narration does not appeal.

The story? At times I felt the author was trying to sell me on some alien propaganda dogma. He starts off by showing the atrocities the aliens commit on unwitting humans, and then goes to great lengths later on to tell me how the aliens are really good and going to save mankind. Which is it? Frankly after reading about another terrible act committed by the Grays I wanted to wipe the slimy rodents from the planet. Strieber's argument that the 'ends justifies the means' just doesn't sit well with me. It reminds me of the victims of abuse defending their captors. In my opinion, I think I'd rather be annihilated than to rely on Strieber's creepy pretentious cruel aliens for survival.

(Minor Spoilers, please do not read if you haven't read the book).

I don't care for novels where there are too many POV switches. The Grays started off fine, but then we are treated to about 8 different characters and their perspective, it began to get tiresome. I did not like the way the author revealed the grays secrets. It was way too much telling and way too little showing. I also thought the Grays were evil and not the 'benevolent dictators' the author represented. I was in fact inclined to side with the badguys that they needed to be eliminated. Freedom in slavery is not freedom. The villain character was over-the-top. I would much preferred a strong dedicated professional to a crazed psychotic assassin. Why must authors demonize the opposition to make one side look saintly and another side look degenerate? I think when the villain was implanting dogs with wires to kill their owners and other people I felt my eyeballs rolling. I hate seeing animals killed in books. Yuck.

Finally there is Connor, boy genius. He was extremely annoying. He seems to come from the Wesley Crusher school of characterization because the kid is flawless. I did not care what happened to him or his sappy parents. The whole Marcy thing was just too dumb. Could the author not figure a better way for Dan to get his tenure than to manipulate something so obviously emotionally wrenching such as that? Did they not think about the impact on Connor such an event might have?

End Spoilers

Overall, I give the novel 4 stars. I would've liked it more if the aliens and their motives were not spelled out so carefully and if the book didn't read a bit like a Gray publicity brochure.

Hold onto your seats, hats, whatever, because you will be up all night with this incredible book. Whitley Strieber, famed author of "The Wolfen," "The Hunger," "Communion," and co-author of the pivotal "The Coming Global Superstorm" will blow your mind with "The Grays." If you thought Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was the ultimate tale of alien encounters and abductions, THINK AGAIN.

This story starts of with a bang and never lets up. The story of Dan and Katelyn, two children whose lives are forever entwined because of a joint childhood abduction and the birth of a very special son, become the focus of some very interested people, who have good and bad intentions for the boy named Connor. The pace never lets up for a second as we are introduced to the various extraterrestrials. Any previous ideas you had about who the grays are will be blown out of the water after you finish this book. These incredible beings are not just hear to probe us and take our genetic material. Far from it. You will, dare I say it, fall deeply in love with The Three Thieves.

So, put the coffee pot on, turn on your nighty-night light, draw the curtains, and prepare yourself for one hell of a ride. You WILL not be able to put this book down. Many people I know are already on their second and third readings!

Let me say one more thing. This book is listed as fiction. You will heartily disagree with that monikor when you close it.

The Grays is the latest discourse on alien visitation by Whitley Strieber. While fully clothed as a novel it is abundantly clear that although the narrative events and characters are fictional, the over-arching message - that we are contact with entities from another world - is the center-piece of the work.

Communion, published in 1998, was Mr. Strieber's first foray into non-fiction. In it, he claimed to have been regularly approached by extra-world creatures that seem to need contact - both physical and spiritual - with us. Since then, there have been several more alleged non-fiction works that amplified on Mr. Strieber's experiences as well as those of family, friends and members of what I will call the abductee community. There is also the rather brilliant "Majestic," an out-and-out novel that described the events around and leading from the Roswell Incident of 1948.

It is "Majestic" that is a connective tissue to "The Grays" in that both are driven by the fact that living aliens were captured after a vehicle crashed in the New Mexico desert. However, in the former work, it is the nature of the cover-up and the allegorical rapture of the main character that is the core of the story.

"The Grays," on the other hand, is about the why of the visitation/abduction cycle. We learn why the human race is important to the Grays and how the US government has gone along with their wants and needs to propel its agenda.

The early part of the book introducing the various characters is bumpy and a bit incoherent, as if Strieber perhaps grafted it on late in the writing/editing process or - more likely in my opinion - used some older work notes. I say this because there are some time sequence problems and muddiness about characters.

This all goes away once the story takes hold. Strieber launches his characters - who are, as another reviewer noted, somewhat single-dimensional; almost caricatures - on an adventure story that could have been written by Clive Cussler or Steven Coonts or Arthur C. Clarke.

And therein lays the rub for me. The "Communion" series addressed some major metaphysical issues in that Strieber often stated his inability to determine if the "aliens," be they Gray, Blues, Nordics or whatever, were from another world or simply another dimensional manifestation of our own. There were times that Strieber seemed to imply that religion may have sprung from these entities. Here, we are dealing with a more-or-less straight forward space opera with heavy overtones of government mis- and mal-feasance that include allusions to the war in Iraq and the military-industrial complex. There is narrative flow, but there is no meaningful attempt to explain alien visitation on the sort of higher plane found int he toher works. In a way, I felt cheated at the end of the story because Mr. Strieber manages to denigrate his preceding works by producing a workman-like and somewhat tedious page turner that raises but one question: "Will the good guys beat out the bad guys?"

But, we are not even granted that answer! Instead, in the manner of the Sci-Fi serials of the 30s and 40s, we see a crisis averted but with no true resolution. Instead, one feels that the real message is "wait for the sequel!"

Fact folded into fiction. Aliens, egos, brilliance, blunders, and the mystery is unfolding in a house on your block. You can't put it down but you worry about the parts that may be true. A book to remember.

The book was recomended to me by a collegue, and I loved it! I have since purchased the entire series of Striber abduction books. Of the six, The Grays is the least disturbing and still yet quite thought provoking.

Let me start out by saying that I'm really not sold one way or the other on alien abductions. I believe they are possible, but nothing I've read or seen has convinced me to either viewpoint. So I keep an open mind.

I've read several of Whitley Streiber's abduction books, and I believe, at the very least, that Mr. Streiber believes what he's saying about visitors from another planet (or dimension). With that said, I picked up The Greys expecting to find a fictionalized version of what the author believes is really going on concerning alien visitors.

What I got was a poorly thought out story,filled with difficult to believe actions, and characters who were highly one dimensional.

Spoiler alert: I am going to discuss some events from the story, so if you haven't read the story, and plan to, you might want to skip this part:

There are so many absurd events that take place in what otherwise might have been a fine story, I can't help but feel a vague sense of disappointment! Why did the villain, Mike, go to such amazingly elaborate lengths to have connor killed. Why not just sneak up and give him 2 in the back of the head. If the future of mankind depends on his death, shoot him and be done with it! On the other side of the conflict, if Connor was so important to the Grays, why did they let Mike roam around unchecked. Implant him, use mind control, have him commit suicide, and BE DONE WITH IT! Come on, this is a race that's millions of years old and super intelligent. They are also supposed to be devoid of emotions, so it can't be guilt that's stopping them!

Some of the other actions the grays take strike me as slightly retarded. Not what you'd expect from an alien race millions of years ahead of us. One example is the fire at the silo in Wilton. Why did one of the 3 thieves have to drop himself on the roof to try to destroy the antenna transmitting the signal to all the pre-programmed assassins If they are so advanced, why couldn't they destroy it with some weapon, or the device they use to levitate people, or some form of their higher technology? It just smacks of a poorly thought out plot contrivance. The problem with this is that the events that followed seemed forced and fairly unbelieveable because of it.

Things like that permeate this story. Like the member of the trust who hijacks the TR and uses it, and a program code, to redirect the scalar weapon to destroy the President and all the Senators in Washington. I was in the Navy for a time, and one thing I learned is that really dangerous weapons (like nuclear missiles) must be triggered by at least 2 people, to prevent just such a disaster from taking place. An invisible ship zapping the White House with an earthquake inducing ray is difficult enough to swallow, but expecting the readers to believe the fact that he did it without overcoming any restrictions other than inputting a code number is an insult to our intelligence.

This leads to the ultimate question of the whole story. If Connor and his "super intelligence" was so crucial to the survival of the Gray race, why was he the only one. If I were the Grays, I'd be pumping Connors out by the dozens. Even mega geniuses can die from an accident or illness. If it takes a triad of aliens to do something worthwhile, why didn't they think to make their uber-humans work in threes just like they do? It doesn't sound like a plan designed by a race of superior intelligence to me.

Needless to say, I was let down by this story. Parts of it were OK,which is why I gave it the 2nd star, but I really expected more from a writer of Mr. Streiber's caliber. It did nothing to advance the debate about aliens among us, and it disappointed me as a work of fiction.

Whitley Strieber puts it all together, and in doing so paints a MASTERPIECE OF FICTION on the canvass of his own first-hand, factual experiences--and those of millions of others.

Sometimes fiction can be a better vehicle for certain facts than even non-fiction--especially when "the facts" are unbelievably strange. And the facts about these enigmatic beings ARE unbelievably strange--visitors that have invaded our popular culture in recent years, and taken it by storm.

Visitors known collectively as "the grays."

The author of COMMUNION: A TRUE STORY, a number one New York Times bestseller, does it again in THE GRAYS--and you won't want to miss a page.

As only Whitley Strieber can, readers are taken step-by-step into the creepy horror of the grays' dark world, and in so doing shines new light on the human shadow that has fallen over our own world--a shadow many of us have just begun to perceive.

As THE GRAYS suggests, the only way the night of these two worlds--theirs and ours--can be lifted is by bringing these two races together--and the meeting place between them is a child, eleven year old Conner Callaghan, the product of what is best in both worlds.

THE GRAYS is a novel that develops at breakneck speed, and keeps readers thrilled throughout.

For those who are not yet familiar with the enigmatic grays, before this novel is over YOU WILL BE; for those who have already met them in the dark of night--face-to-face--you will "remember" in the vivid light of day. Hundreds of treasures hidden deep inside reality are planted in the pages of this book, eagerly waiting for readers to uncover.

But first you need to open "the cover."

Highly recommended.