Touched by an Alien (Alien Novels) [Mass Market Paperback]

Gini Koch (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 6, 2010 | Series: Alien Novels

How can a sexy marketing manager join forces with an Alpha Centauri male in Armani to save the planet-using hairspray, a Mont Blanc pen, and rock n' roll?

Easy...

She's Touched by an Alien

Marketing manager Katherine "Kitty" Katt steps into the middle of what appears to be a domestic dispute turned ugly. And it only gets uglier when the man turns into a winged monster, straight out of a grade-Z horror movie, and goes on a killing spree. Though Kitty should probably run away, she springs into action to take the monster down.

In the middle of the chaos a handsome hunk named Jeff Martini appears, sent by the "agency" to perform crowd control. He's Kitty's kind of guy, no matter what planet he's from. And from now on, for Kitty, things are going to be sexy, dangerous, wild, and out of this world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Koch's derivative debut piles on the comic book clichés. Katherine Kitty Katt's orderly world is shaken when she sees a man on the street turn into a monster. After she manages to kill it, secret agents whisk her away and explain that these superbeings are humans mutated by alien parasites. The agents are aliens themselves, visitors from Alpha Centauri who are tracking a particularly powerful superbeing that has taken over the mind of a terrorist leader. Handsome agent Jeff Martini instantly becomes obsessed with Kitty, who unaccountably finds it sexy and romantic when he acts like an aggressive stalker. The plot moves quickly and Koch's prose shows promise, but the action scenes drag a bit, and the constant erotic overtones of Jeff and Kitty's banter are painfully intrusive. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* When Katherine “Kitty” Katt instinctively uses her Montblanc pen to slay an alien parasite after leaving the courthouse following some jury duty, she’s swept into a secret community of Armani-clad, superfast Alpha-Centaurians and gorgeous humans that is fighting a parasitic alien menace. The parasites turn emotional humans into a variety of horrifying, supervillainous monsters. Kitty is taken to a secret installation deep below New Mexico, where she discovers that her parents lead far more exciting lives than she had ever imagined. Traveling with empath and love-interest Jeff and crew to a remote location to battle a crowd of supervillains bearing hilariously unoriginal supernames, Kitty uses her iPod, an armored vehicle, hot water, and hairspray as weapons. This delightful romp has many interesting twists and turns as it glances at racism, politics, and religion en route. It will have fanciers of cinematic sf parodies referencing Men in Black, Ghost Busters, and X-Men. Meanwhile, readers who like the smart sf silliness of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy novels, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga, Pat Murphy’s There and Back Again (2000), and A. Lee Martinez’s The Automatic Detective (2008) will find it distinctively different, for Koch’s humor is more in the vein of MaryJanice Davidson in her Undead series, but darned amusing, all the same. --Diana Tixier Herald

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: DAW; Original edition (April 6, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0756406005
• ISBN-13: 978-0756406004
• Product Dimensions: 4.1 x 1.2 x 6.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (90 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #468,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Over-the-top and wonderful April 12, 2010

By Dee18 TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is the first book in Gini Koch's Katherine "Kitty" Katt series. It is available as both a paperback and e-book.

I really thoroughly and surprisingly loved this book. Seriously, it's awesome.

I found this book because of the cover art. The artist is the incredibly talented Daniel Dos Santos, who draws all of Patricia Briggs's `Mercy Thompson' US covers. I saw this image up on his website as apart of his book covers portfolio - and because I do judge a book by its cover, I went hunting and found it was Gini Koch's `Touched by an Alien'.

The title kind of threw me, and I almost didn't bother. Aliens may be how the science fiction genre got its kick-start, but I wasn't sure about an alien themed book. The closest I've come is Ann Aguirre's `Sirantha Jax' series - which I really love, but is set in another galaxy, not present-day earth. I was under the assumption that any alien invasion scifi book would be along the geeky lines of Star Trek. Boy, was I wrong and naďve.

A lot happens right from page one. The opening chapter involves Katherine "Kitty" Katt (yes it's a stupid name, she only has her parents to blame) witnessing a domestic dispute turn deadly. She watches as a man kills his wife, and then sprout wings with dagger feathers. Katherine bizarrely goes into autopilot; grabbing her Mont Blanc pen she rugby-tackles this weird creature, and innately knows precisely where to stab and kill him.
After her hero-routine she's swooped up by a group of hunky Armani-clad `agents' who take her somewhere called `home base' in New Mexico where they none too delicately break the news to her that aliens exist, and she might just have a job killing them...

Intense, huh? As the story unfolds Katherine discovers that these `agents' don't work for Homeland Security, but are actually an alien race called `Alpha Centauri', sent to planet earth to protect us from a parasitic alien species that want to make drones of us all.

This is a fun, fast-paced and sexy read that shouldn't be taken too seriously. `Touched by an Alien' leans toward the melodramatic and outlandish -but it's fun and Koch works it so well. Halfway through the first chapter you realize that Koch isn't basing this story in any sort of realist, nitty-gritty reality - it's much more of an Alien/scifi soap opera. But it totally works. Especially because a good chunk of the story revolves around a very intense and unique love story.

One of the Armani-clad alien agents is Jeff Martini, and one of the first sentences out of his mouth to Katherine is "will you marry me?" Throughout those vital information-dumping chapters Martini provides comic relief and surprising chemistry whenever he turns to Katherine and says "so, how many kids do you want?" and "no, seriously - marry me!" He may sound creepy and clingy, but he doesn't come across that way at all. This is the quickest romance I have ever read, and I'm a little in awe of how well it works. Martini is very up-front and truthful in his attraction to Katherine, and she eventually relents... that's when alien bedroom stamina kicks in and Koch writes some very yummy and steamy sex scenes. Let me just say `whew boy!'

I loved the love story. I was really shocked that it worked so well for me, considering the fact that Koch sets up the romance right from the protagonists' first meeting - it was fast, but held my interest throughout and remained steamy.

Katherine is a great leading lady. She's not your typical action heroine - she's a Jewish marketing exec thrown into the middle of an inter-galactic war just because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I loved her. She's snarky and sometimes barely clinging to her mental stability amidst all the Alien revelations. She's great.

Martini is amazing. He could have come across as creepy and smothering because he hits on Katherine so quickly, but Koch really finessed his character. He's funny, charming and just generally swoon-worthy. I loved him!

I loved this book. I went in sceptical, but came out a convert - to the point that I might have to go looking for some more Alien-themed fantasy books. `Touched by an Alien' is extremely melodramatic, with an over-the-top, flamboyant and unbelievable storyline. But it's fun. Koch doesn't take herself too seriously - she writes fast and furious action-packed scenes and an even faster romance. It all came together beautifully for me, and I found myself totally sucked in.

Second book `Alien Tango' is set for a December 2010 release. I can't wait.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun, entertaining and different April 8, 2010

By Aliza Mansolino

Format:Mass Market Paperback

While I enjoy urban fantasy/paranormals, I am so very tired of tormented vampires, werewolves, etc. and the tough yet sexy women who love them. I picked this up because, hey, aliens! I really enjoyed it - it was totally entertaining. The heroine is smart, funny, Jewish (how often to do you run across that in UF?), and has a great relationship with her parents. She doesn't wear leather pants and her weapon of choice is hairspray. The hero is too good to be true (he's an empath with amazing, umm, stamina who looks great in Armani) but he's brood-free! It's a fun "girl kills evil alien, meets a bunch of really cute good aliens and falls in love while saving the world" read. Pick this up if you're looking for something a little different.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Campy, sexy fun that's unfortunately heavy on the infodumps October 15, 2010

By Pamela VINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback

The cover originally attracted me to this book. Artistically, it's well done. And it features a couple of good-looking people making out while holding guns in front of an explosion.

How could I resist that?

Now that I think about it, "good looking people making out while holding guns in front of explosions" pretty much sums up Touched By An Alien. It's the book version of a B-movie, one that stars Bruce Campbell and that enjoys being campy and silly and as over-the-top as it possibly can be. It was definitely a fun read, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have issues that made me a little twitchy. I'll start with the good stuff.

Koch's writing is funny and lighthearted, and I found myself laughing out loud pretty often. The major characters, from protagonist Katherine "Kitty" Katt to ridiculously gorgeous alien special agent Jeff Martini to Kitty's parents, were all pretty well-developed, and for the most part, their motivations were understandable and in Jeff's case, quite sympathetic. Christopher, ridiculously gorgeous alien special agent #2, ranked quite a bit lower on my likability scale mainly because he spends most of the book being a jealous jerk. The supporting characters are pretty one-dimensional--the super-smart, super-sexy female aliens, in particular, irritated me--but honestly, with the B-movie vibe of the book, I didn't expect a bunch of well-rounded characters.

A major plus for this book: the love scenes were SMOKING hot. Smoking.

Kitty's ingenuity in the action scenes was pretty entertaining; killing her first alien superbeing creature with her Mont Blanc pen was a fun surprise, as was her creative idea to spray the big baddie in the face with extra hold hairspray. Her off-the-cuff weaponry is fun, but it also leads to one of my major problems with the book.

I just couldn't engage my implausibility shielding mechanism for the whole thing. I'm pretty easy when it comes to buying into storylines that are unrealistic. That's pretty much part and parcel of being a science fiction and fantasy fan. But some of the fight scenes in Touched By An Alien took it juuuust a bit past the level that I can buy into. The idea that our protagonist, a marketing manager, can fly a fighter jet while getting instructions over the radio from a pilot stretched it juuuust a bit too far for me. There were some conveniently deus-ex-machina solutions, and some of the action scenes stretched on too far. I was impatient for the big SUV battle to be over.

The book also suffers from major infodump overload. Seriously, at least half of the book consists of characters sitting around, telling each other about how the aliens got to Earth and what's going on with the crazy parasite superbeings. I hate infodumps, and while the reader does need a lot of information to understand fully what's going on in this crazy world, I feel like there had to have been a better way to get that info across without resorting to a hundred pages of talking heads.

Now that the world is established, I'm hoping that subsequent books in the series will move a bit more smoothly. And despite the narrative problems in this one, I did enjoy it for the most part. I'm looking forward to book two, and I hope Ms. Koch improves on her creative, funny creation.

This review originally published at The Discriminating Fangirl.