Sorry, Humans (Especially Greg) - Faralee Pozo - ★★★.½

AUTHOR: Faralee Pozo

GENRE: Sci-fi Romance

PUBLICATION DATE: August 30, 2024

RATING: 3.5 stars

In a Nutshell: An unusual novel straddling multiple genres: humour, romance, mystery, thriller, science fiction, and end-of-the-world. Slow-paced and a bit repetitive, but entertaining enough if you are looking for a light read with an unusual plotline.

Plot Preview:

Let me copy-paste the GR blurb here for once:

“It's the age-old story. Boy meets girl. Girl lies to boy about being human. Girl accidentally destroys planet. Girl apologizes super hard.”

This story is epistolary, written as the apology letter by the girl to all humans, especially Greg. The “girl” is an alien queen, and that’s what turns this *age-old story* into a humorous novelty.

Bookish Yays:

👽 Our narrator and the writer of this extended apology: the alien queen known as Aria. Unlike any queen you have ever met in fiction, be it human or animal or alien, Aria’s quirky nature and impulsiveness lead to many goof-ups, and this multi-hued character development makes this book an entertaining one.

👽 Many of the other characters are also atypically sketched. The queen’s aide, the local politician, the human who ends up as Aria’s confidant, the FBI agent – I won’t take any names so that you can discover who’s who when you read the book, but suffice it to say, none of them were portrayed the way these characters usually are. Their portrayal offers a novelty that might not necessarily be positive but was certainly refreshing.

👽 The “aliens’ – I loved how their depiction broke the mould of standard alien behaviour in fiction. Their tech was matched by the community spirit.

👽 The blurb makes the book sound like a romcom with some fantastical elements. The book is much more than that, covering some serious themes and a well-written coming-of-age arc for Aria. While I wouldn’t have minded an alien romcom for the sheer quirkiness of the idea, I liked the depth of this storyline even more.

👽 Goes without saying that the plot is one of the most unique stories I have read. It hops across multiple genres – romance, mystery, humour, alien sci-fi, end-of-the-world, and action – but manages to do justice to most. The retrospective epistolary style adds a further newness to this storyline.

👽 While I never like romance to make an appearance in non-romance genre books, the story keeps the romantic track exactly where it should be – on the backburner. Though it is Aria’s feelings that set off an unexpected chain of events, they are written in an almost comic manner, even when she’s lovelorn.

👽 The cover is adorable!

Bookish Mixed Bags:

🛸 Aria has a tendency of explaining many of her words/statements with the use of footnotes. Too many footnotes! There are 259 footnotes in the book, 25 of which appear within the first 5%. Footnotes can be fun additions to the plot when limited to a certain quantity, but this went a bit too far. Of course, many of the footnotes were hilarious. But some of the notes contain major foreshadowing, which I dislike. I don't mind footnotes in physical books, but in digital copies, they are more of an encumbrance. After a while, I began skipping the footnotes unless I was too curious about the highlighted word.

🛸 As the letter is written retrospectively as an apology to humans, we already know that the aliens somehow managed to explode the planet. The plot is mostly a build-up to how this happened. This meant that in some of the situations, we already knew the whats, but read on to figure out the hows. But the mystery is a good one and not that easy to figure out.

🛸 The humour in the book is funny and even sardonic, especially at the start. But after a point, some of it feels forced. Aria’s selective forgetfulness of [A]’s name was especially annoying as it felt too repetitive after a point.

🛸 There are a few convenient coincidences in terms of Aria’s meeting the right humans at the right time, especially through Greg who seems to know exactly the kind of people Aria needs. But let’s put this down to fictional leeway and alien luck.

🛸 The book starts off well, but in between, it feels repetitive and dragged. The ending salvages the story as we finally see what led to the catastrophe. The proceedings aren’t exactly as anticipated.

Bookish Nays:

👾 Minor issue: There are some inconsistencies in Aria’s communication. For instance, she redacts all human cuss words but retains the bad words from her own language. She doesn't know much about human first names and last names, but knows a surprisingly large number of male names beginning with the letter A.

All in all, this is a fairly entertaining debut, that, despite becoming lax in its tempo and plot development in between, kept me reading. The outlandish plot and the curious characters combine to create a novel that’s simultaneously fun as well as frightening. It didn’t grip me, but as a light entertainer, it passed muster.

Recommended to readers looking for an offbeat novel that is light and dark at once.

My thanks to Splinter Press for providing the DRC of “Sorry, Humans (Especially Greg)” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.