Richard Phillips (1) (1956–)

(K)(2009)Sci-fi story. 2 alien space crafts are battling over New Mexico and both crash. One is found and studied but the other was never discovered. 3 teens do find the 2nd one and upon exploring and researching it find that the ship has enhanced them mentally and physically. They encounter evil scientists and government agents who want to find this ship and its powers as well. Readable but not really exciting.(Amazon) Two ships fight high in the atmosphere in 1945 near Roswell and crash. Only one is discovered, and studied for 60 years. The deputy director of the project researching the ship has discovered some surprising things about it, and has his own, apparently evil, agenda. The second ship is discovered by three teens, and, for no reason other than that its necessary for the plot to move forward, they put the circlets they find inside the ship onto their heads at exactly the same time, a ship-mind connection is formed, and they learn that their ship was the good guys and the other ship is some sort of harbringer of destruction. From this beginning, we are off to the races, and treated to a mix of alien technologies, evil plots, secret agents, assassins, with some rape, torture and murder thrown in.… (meer)

Full of mystery and intrigue, this book explores what would have happened if aliens ships (UFOs) had actually crashed on earth, and the government scientists had discovered, explored and exploited the alien technology. I find the treatment of the subject matter quite gratifying - everything is shrouded in secrecy and revealed only in parts; the reader doesn't get a grasp of the full extent of the technology until much later in the book. Throw a few rogue scientists, super-assassins and undercover agents into the mix and you've got a compelling piece of Sci-Fi waiting to be read.

The story centers around three high school students who also stumble across the alien technology in the desert, giving rise to experimentation and the consequences thereof. Here a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief is required, as they start building their own versions of the technology in their basement.

As they get entangled in the intricacies of the schemes, you are drawn into their fight for survival, leading to a nail-biting climax. The only gripe is that the story is only part finished, to be continued in sequels, despite being a fairly lengthy book. Nevertheless, an enjoyable read.… (meer)

This review first appeared on on scifiandscary.com

‘Once Dead’ manages to be a horror novel, a sci fi novel and at the same time neither of those things. It’s a weird twist on the kind of ‘moody special forces guy growls and kicks butt’ books that proliferate on Kindle Unlimited where the twist is completely pointless.
It starts with moody special forces guy Jack (of course it’s Jack, they’re always called Jack) Gregory) getting killed in Calcutta whilst trying to avenge his brother’s death. As Jack slips into the afterlife he meets a being who is initially described as a demon, but later as an inter-dimensional mind worm, who offers Jack a second chance at life if he agrees to act as a human host for it.
The book is in some way related to another series by the same author which I haven’t read. I’m assuming the other series gives some kind of explanation of the origins of the inter-dimensional mind worm, as ‘Once Dead’ gives no explanation at all. Jack comes back to life, although his former CIA bosses think he is dead, and becomes a gun for hire. Now that he’s got an inter-dimensional mind worm on board he’s slightly moodier and more inclined to kick butts than he was before. But only slightly. With that set up out of the way, Jack’s companion hardly any further appearances in the book, and has absolutely no bearing on the plot.
That plot is your standard evil European billionaire trying to blow up the world affair, with a side order of Russian mafia enforcers and corrupt US intelligence officials. It has plenty of the standard action thriller tropes- lots of descriptions of guns, people doing clever things with computers, beautiful female operatives who fall for the hero despite how moody he is, intense rivalry between the different US intelligence agencies, etc, etc
It does also have some neat ideas - like the NSA-developed Big John, a data mining solution that is built into the kernel of every piece of anti virus software and uses the different devices it runs on as nodes in a global neural net. Any inventiveness gets drowned out by all the running around and shooting though.
It’s not a terrible book, some of the action sequences are really tense, but it just all feels a bit pointless. This is made even more the case by the fact that the horror/sci fi elements that are hinted at the start are completely lost as the book progressed. I can’t entirely hate a book that deliver lines like
“This would be his one-way ticket to hell. And on this train, Jacob Knox would be the conductor.”
With a straight face, but I won’t be rushing out to read more my Richard Phillips’ work.
… (meer)