Invasion by Luke Rhinehart Review

I’d heard good things about The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart, so the idea of trying out his latest book Invasion certainly appealed. And for the most part I enjoyed it, but it did end up climbing up its own backside a little as the story pressed on.

The premise of the book is that some hairy beach ball shaped aliens have arrived, and one of them has made friends with a fisherman who clearly thinks nothing of inviting a random bouncing shape-shifting creature into his home. This playful alien soon turns out to have an intelligence far beyond any human, and starts hacking into government and banking systems, messing things up and generally just playing around. That’s right, they’re just here to play.

Things soon kick off as you’d expect, and for much of the book it’s a good, fun story to keep up with. But a few things bugged me, most of all the strong moral message ticking along underneath. I felt like I was being preached to at times, being told I should be more forgiving and more accepting of other people. That message might shock some people (see: Trump, Brexit) but as someone who tends to embrace other cultures I found it a bit patronising, and it ruined the story that might’ve just been better off being about some aliens dicking around with the world.

If you don’t mind strong political undercurrents in your books then you’ll be fine, but it really put me off. Not a bad story by any means, but beware of that unfortunate element.