Review: Four books by Henry Melton

By Chris Meadows

A while ago, I bought Henry Melton’s young-adult novel Emperor Dad, and enjoyed it enough that I reviewed it here. Since then, I requested and received free review e-copies of four of his other books, and finally got around to reading the last of them.

Books by Henry Melton Google Books previews (free but incomplete) Falling Bakward audiobook podcast, read by author: Free Author’s Web Store: $14.95 (Paperback; includes free shipping & autograph) Amazon: $11.66 (Paperback), $4.95 (Kindle) iPhone App Store: $4.99 (encapsulated appbook; Roswell or Bust and Emperor Dad only) Mobipocket.com: $4.95 (encrypted Mobi)

In the info box, I have linked to several places the books can be purchased. If you are planning to buy the dead-tree version, I suggest purchasing direct from the author; he will autograph it for you, and will make more out of the deal than from an Amazon sale. Alternately, if you buy one of the DRM-locked e-books and send Melton proof of your purchase, he will e-mail you a DRM-free version.

Rather than review each book individually, I’m going to cover each of them separately, then talk about what they have in common.

Roswell or Bust

Two teenagers—third-generation hotel worker Joe Ferris and second-generation Person-in-Black Judith Winston—are thrown together by a string of emergency circumstances, and must drive eleven Roswell aliens cross-country with the forces of the “Men in Black”-like Trust agency in hot pursuit.

The story reads kind of like a cross between a more realistic Men in Black and Escape to Witch Mountain. (It was written well before the movie Race to Witch Mountain came out, and it is amusing to compare their stories.) Certain elements are very clearly borrowed, such as the Trust agency having a method of inducing amnesia (though its pharmacological nature puts it more in line with Torchwood than Men in Black).

But for all that, the story does not feel unoriginal. Joe and Judith are well-realized characters, and they fit well together. Like real people, they do not always agree or get along, but they manage to work together where it counts. Melton shows a lot of attention to detail; it’s clear that he has personally traveled to many of the places that the characters visit over the course of the story. (In fact, this is true for all of his books; Melton travels half the year according to his Amazon page.)

Extreme Makeover

Teenagers are no strangers to mysterious changes to their bodies—but some changes are more extreme than others. Deena Brooke, a senior in high school, is infected by alien nanites, giving her strange new abilities at the same time as they start making her doubt her sanity. Meanwhile, her new boyfriend Luther has some mysterious, dark, and possibly criminal secrets of his own.

I’ve written some stories of my own involving nanites and read a lot of others, and they are one of my favorite mcguffins. (For more extreme examples, see Charles Stross’s Accelerando and Glasshouse.) Melton does a credible job with them here, presenting their alien nature (and alien thought processes) very well. Luther’s predicament is somewhat less credible (strange as it is to say in comparison to an infection by alien nanites), but I’m prepared to suspend some extra disbelief in the name of a good story.

Extreme Makeover is not my favorite of Melton’s books—but I do not think he is capable of writing a bad story, so it is still very enjoyable.

Lighter Than Air

When a next-door neighbor inventor leaves high-schooler Jon Kish with the keys to his workshop, Jon decides to use the anti-gravity material they created together to build the ultimate high school prank: a real live flying saucer. Meanwhile, his younger sister Cherry is getting into big trouble on the Internet—trouble which could have major repercussions.

Melton clearly knows enough about science to make the antigravity material seem believable. He also knows a great deal about computers (as mentioned in my review of Emperor Dad) and so everything Cherry does on the Internet, or with the LiveCDs her Internet pen pal sends her, is recognizable and believable to those who know in exactly the way that “Hollywood” computers are not. At the same time, the true nature of Cherry’s pen pal is a little hard to swallow—but again, the rest is good enough that I can suspend the extra belief.

It is also nice to see a sympathetic portrayal of government agents. It has become fashionable (especially in the wake of the PATRIOT Act and the Second Gulf War) to portray them as evil torturers and violators of the right to privacy, but in Lighter Than Air they end up working together with Jon Kish for a number of good reasons.

Falling Bakward

Jerry Ingram, high-schooler and sixth-generation South Dakota farmer, has an interest in archaeology that will lead to interesting consequences. He has been excavating a mysterious spot in his parents’ field, uncovering strange tools and stranger bones. Then he finds a flying saucer—and unwittingly opens the way to a possible alien invasion.

Along with Emperor Dad, this is one of my two favorite books of Melton’s. I am not sure whether it is coincidental that this is the other one that involves teleportation portals, and in fact these portals share some common elements with the ones from Emperor Dad. Falling Bakward is part mystery, part lost-world story, and part alien-invasion tale, and each element is executed just as well as the others. There are still a few sour notes, however.

Most notably, though most of Melton’s books tend to border on hard science-fiction, this one also involves a couple of “softer” SF elements that are never explained in such a way as to fit in with the harder elements. It is nowhere near as jarring as the intrusive fantasy element I complained about in my review of Darkness of the Light by Peter David, but it did detract a little from my enjoyment. Still, this is an excellent book on the whole.

Falling Bakward is also available as a free audiobook podcast, read by the author.

Young-Adult Books

As I mentioned in my review of Emperor Dad, properly-written young-adult novels are by and large every bit as compelling as “adult adult” novels. They are not written down to the reader (despite what some people think). The only differences are in the age of the main characters, and often the subject matter they cover.

Melton’s books are no different; they all involve young people trying to work out ordinary young-person problems (often having to do with parental authority figures or relating to the opposite gender) at the same time as they have to work out larger problems (such as how to rescue a bunch of aliens, or prevent other aliens from invading the Earth).

Adults are not presented as universally helpful or obstructive, and sometimes first impressions can be misleading. The young protagonists also know when to seek the help of their parents or other adults—and usually, those adults take them seriously (though it may sometimes take some convincing).

These books help teenagers imagine what it would be like to have adult responsibilities—and the rest of us imagine what it would be like to be teenagers again. I highly recommend all of them.

Henry Melton has a new book coming out: Golden Girl, a novel about a girl who wakes up to find she is an unwilling time traveler. I have not had the chance to read that one yet—but I am quite looking forward to it.