The Windkey and the Lamplighter

These two paperbacks were a birthday present from my Dad, who is awesome.
The books are sort-of awesome. I will clarify.

These are brain candy. Sugary sweet read-until-you-run-out candy. But, like candy, they were really fun to read, if not quite high-quality literature. I was a little irritated by the huge print and margins—a better typesetter could have made them a 250 page mass-market paperback, instead of a 340 page paperback.
The author also has a weird habit of referring to people by their full names *all the time*. I suspect this, as well as the large print, may be signs that I am not in the age group of the intended audience.
Maybe there are people who would not track pronouns for half a dozen characters, or remember that “Charley” is “Charlotte Pine” if not reminded every few pages. Coonts lives in Colorado, like my family, so I was amused by some amount of local nods. I was pleased that he kept them sparse, though—one saucer over Coors Field during a Rockies game is sufficient.

I actually really enjoyed these. There are some lovely fighter-pilot moments (unsurprising, given Coonts’ background) and the pseudoscience behind the flying saucers and antiproton weapons isn’t too terrible. Coonts political leanings may be showing in his depiction of the unintelligent, self-serving, cowardly president, but it doesn’t interfere much with the story—the scenes with politicians are grating but soon over. Saucer is the better book—Saucer the Conquest was better than I expected from the title, but not as good as I would have hoped. I did keep reading until I finished both, mostly because the characters are intriguing enough that I wanted to know what happened next. Charlie Pine, Rip Cantrell and his uncle Egg remind me a bit of the main characters in the Lensman series—they’re just *so cool* that you have to keep reading to find out what they do next.

I recommend picking these up from the library if you are home sick, going on a long flight, or otherwise have a few hours to kill. I probably wouldn’t buy them (if I didn’t already have them) since I am very unlikely to reread them. I am, however, happy to lend them out.