The Grays by Whitley Strieber (2006, Hardcover)

The Grays is the latest discourse on alien visitation by Whitley Strieber. While fully clothed as a novel it is abundantly clear that although the narrative events and characters are fictional, the over-arching message - that we are contact with entities from another world - is the center-piece of the work.

Communion, published in 1998, was Mr. Strieber's first foray into non-fiction. In it, he claimed to have been regularly approached by extra-world creatures that seem to need contact - both physical and spiritual - with us. Since then, there have been several more alleged non-fiction works that amplified on Mr. Strieber's experiences as well as those of family, friends and members of what I will call the abductee community. There is also the rather brilliant "Majestic," an out-and-out novel that described the events around and leading from the Roswell Incident of 1948.

It is "Majestic" that is a connective tissue to "The Grays" in that both are driven by the fact that living aliens were captured after a vehicle crashed in the New Mexico desert. However, in the former work, it is the nature of the cover-up and the allegorical rapture of the main character that is the core of the story.

"The Grays," on the other hand, is about the why of the visitation/abduction cycle. We learn why the human race is important to the Grays and how the US government has gone along with their wants and needs to propel its agenda.

The early part of the book introducing the various characters is bumpy and a bit incoherent, as if Strieber perhaps grafted it on late in the writing/editing process or - more likely in my opinion - used some older work notes. I say this because there are some time sequence problems and muddiness about characters.

This all goes away once the story takes hold. Strieber launches his characters - who are, as another reviewer noted, somewhat single-dimensional; almost caricatures - on an adventure story that could have been written by Clive Cussler or Steven Coonts or Arthur C. Clarke.

And therein lays the rub for me. The "Communion" series addressed some major metaphysical issues in that Strieber often stated his inability to determine if the "aliens," be they Gray, Blues, Nordics or whatever, were from another world or simply another dimensional manifestation of our own. There were times that Strieber seemed to imply that religion may have sprung from these entities. Here, we are dealing with a more-or-less straight forward space opera with heavy overtones of government mis- and mal-feasance that include allusions to the war in Iraq and the military-industrial complex. There is narrative flow, but there is no meaningful attempt to explain alien visitation on the sort of higher plane found int he toher works. In a way, I felt cheated at the end of the story because Mr. Strieber manages to denigrate his preceding works by producing a workman-like and somewhat tedious page turner that raises but one question: "Will the good guys beat out the bad guys?"

But, we are not even granted that answer! Instead, in the manner of the Sci-Fi serials of the 30s and 40s, we see a crisis averted but with no true resolution. Instead, one feels that the real message is "wait for the sequel!"

I read this book almost without putting it down, kept me on the edge of my seat! This is the first book I have had the pleasure of reading by Strieber. Now, I'm searching out other works by the author.I hope somebody makes The Grays into a movie. Tim

I BOUGHT THIS BOOK BECAUSE FIRST OF ALL IT IS VERY HARD TO FIND AND EBAY NEVER LETS ME DOWN. I ALWAYS FIND WHAT I AM LOOKING FOR . SOMETIMES IT TAKES A WHILE BUT WHAT MORE CAN I ASK WHEN IT IS DELIVERED TO MY DOOR. I LOVE EBAY!