- Publisher: BANTAM DOUBLEDAY DELL
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Publication date: 06/27/2023
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Pages: 416
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ISBN-10: 0593499859
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ISBN-13: 978-0593499856
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Author: Connie Willis
The Road To Roswell by Connie Willis is another delightful story by the author. One of my favorite things about Connie Willis’s writing is that you never know what you are going to get. She writes a wide range of stories in a wide range of styles. I would say I enjoy her style of writing, but her style varies with each project, and she always turns out a great book. She can be very serious and she can be very silly and everything in between, and she does them all with great skill. The Road To Roswell is on the silly side of this spectrum.
Francie has been asked to be the maid of honor at her friend’s alien-themed wedding to a ‘true believer’ in Roswell, New Mexico during the annual UFO festival. Her main plan in attending is to be a voice of reason and help talk her friend out of going through with the wedding. Over the years, she has played a similar role in assisting her former roommate from making other serious relationship errors with various other odd suitors.
After meeting briefly with the bride-to-be, she goes to retrieve something from her friend’s car where she finds an odd ‘tumbleweed’ in the front seat that turns out to be a stranded alien. She is abducted and forced to drive the alien out of town which begins a trek across the Southwest. Along the way, they pick up a hitchhiker, a UFO enthusiast, an old woman from a gambling bus trip and others as they cross and recross the desert in search of something that only the alien “Indy” knows they are looking for.
This is not amazing literature, but it is a whole lot of fun as Francie and company try to find ways to communicate with the alien and how to avoid government capture and how to get along with each other in an enclosed space. Willis plays with the reader, using most of the alien abduction tropes you can think of along the way. From UFO crashes to possible invasions to Elvis weddings to nearly every Western movie ever made, Connie Willis incorporates them all into an amusing and satisfying science fiction, romantic comedy, alien abduction, Las Vegas adventure story.
I love Connie Willis’s works, and this one is another enchanting read. I can’t tell you that you will love all of her work as they each take on different tones and different styles. I think you will like them all, but be ready for a very different experience reading The Road To Roswell than you would have with The Doomsday Book or many of her other works.
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