Customer Reviews

The Wannoshay Cycle

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The premise of The Wannoshay Cycle might be familiar to some readers: alien refugees from a dying world crash land on Earth. But whereas some authors would use that premise to explore the flash and glitter of aliens and spaceships, Jasper uses it to explore humanity.

His heroes are a single mother with a sick child, a priest fighting to hold on to his faith, a young drug addict and filmmaker ... real people, each one affected in different ways by the arrival of the Wannoshay. The mother fears for her job as the U.S. government attempts to integrate the Wannoshay into the factory where she works. The priest must find his role when he's brought in to speak to the Wannoshay about faith.

One example of Jasper's skill is the way his characters react the first time they meet the Wannoshay. For most, there's a moment of instinctive fear and panic. The Wannoshay are something outside of our experience. Millions of years of evolution have done nothing to prepare us for the truly alien, and that moment of first contact is overwhelming. While it might be less glamorous than the heroic explorer who meets a new race without a glimmer of fear, Jasper's version is far more believable.

The plot is a bit light compared to some SF fare. There are no space battles, no desperate race to save mankind from destruction. Much of the book feels almost leisurely as we learn about the characters and the Wannoshay's struggle against cultists and racism, not to mention the mysterious ailment plaguing their race. It is this ailment that drives the plot, as our characters learn more about the choices the Wannoshay made when they left their world.

Jasper has clearly spent a great deal of time developing the Wannoshay and their culture. The result is an interesting book, and a perceptive examination of how America might react to the arrival of such refugees.

They came from a dying world whose sun was being extinguished and until they could find another planet to sustain them, they dug tunnels with their claws and lived underground. Finally astronomers found earth; the Mother Ship and a flotilla head for specific landing sites but they lose contact with the main ship and land in the Midwest and Canada. In a country fearful of illegal aliens and terrorists, the outer space aliens are met with trepidation.

The government tries to integrate them into mainstream society using them as cheap labor; but when two explosions attributed to the aliens occur they are moved into internment camps and labor farms. The aliens are ill from drug addiction and a "soul sickness" that drives them to kill and if something is not done it could spread to humans. A group of sympathetic humans travel to the Mother Ship in Iowa City in hopes they can do something to help the Wannoshay and give them a chance to heal and have a good life.

If readers see the way the aliens are treated similar to the way Hitler treated the Jews and slave owners treated the slaves, the author has gotten his point across. The aliens are very different than humans with claws for hands to dig and tentacles instead of hair and people fear those that are different. Many people rise above their instinctual fears and go out of their way to help, as everyday people show heart, compassion, and the ability to see that accepting differences is good for everyone. Michael Jasper has written an enthralling encounter of the third kind.

Harriet Klausner

In the not-too-distant future, an alien race called the Wannoshay has crash-landed in the Midwest and Canada. While the aliens try to integrate into our society, they must overcome obstacles such as prejudice, fear, and many Wannoshay have become prone to violent outbursts. After a series of tragic accidents which are blamed on the aliens, the Wannoshay are placed in internment camps.

Meanwhile, seemingly random individuals begin experiencing strange visions and feel compelled to help the aliens, leading them all to the crash site of the Wannoshay mother ship. Why are they here? And can humanity overcome prejudice and fear before ruining relations and destroying their whole alien race?

A soft-scifi novel, The Wannoshay Cycle centers more on characters and relationships than action and plot progression. This was an interesting look at how Americans might react to a completely different race trying to integrate into our society. Acceptance without knowledge of their nature would be close to impossible. And Michael Jasper has created a fascinating culture of aliens in the completely unique Wannoshay. This was a nice change of pace from my usual taste of space action scifi.

In the Wannoshay Cycle, Michael Jasper brings together a group of diverse men and women pulled together by their connection to the Wannoshay, who have crash landed on our planet. The novel weaves together several lives as Jasper examines how humans and Wannoshay interact. The picture isn't always pretty. Human paranoia, discrimination, and exploitation mirror some of our modern society's xenophobic tendencies. To complicate matters, the Wannoshay have secrets of their own. The Wannoshay Cycle is a well-rendered ensemble novel with characters this reader really cared about.

A first novel evidently put together from five shorter pieces but reading smoothly as a continuous narrative despite this. Unusual in that there is a strong element of concern with the religious life and cocerns about ethical questions in dealing with alien lifeforms. Not perfect but well above average. It may be taken as a sidewise commentary on illegal immigration.