“The Shifter’s Trail” by Adam Alexander, is an alien invasion novel filled with lots of math problems, shape shifting aliens who are trying to destroy Earth, and three ordinary sixth graders who somehow need to stop the alien attacks before Earth disintegrates into a pile of human bones. So no, these aliens do not come in peace. Set in Chicago, Illinois, new author Alexander writes a fast-paced science fiction/fantasy novel about a race against time.
The story starts with Andromeda Brown, DeMarcus Reeves, and Mhairi MacPherson, twelve year old kids going to middle school. But their whole lives are changed when aliens start to invade Chicago. It’s up to these three kids to not only save Chicago, but the entire world. Yeah, talk about pressure. Except it’s hard to do that when they don’t even know what the enemy looks like, because they can shape shift into anything they wants; cops, dogs, cats. You get the point, but the main priority for the aliens (called Kulrada), is to get rid of people who know about their existence. In order to stop Kulrada, Andromeda, DeMarcus, and Mhairi need to team up with a group of good aliens to be able to take them down.
Overall, the whole book was a failed version of the “Transformers” movie. The concept of these two stories is similar: bad supernatural being come to Earth to destroy it for no particular reason, while the good supernatural beings find humans to help take down the bad guy. At least in Transformers, the robots from outer space had cool powers and a sense of humor, but the aliens in “The Shifter’s Trial” weren’t unique. They were the typical “take me to your leader” aliens.
Even though the novel moved along quickly, there’s only one word I can describe The Shifter’s Trail: random. Don’t get me wrong, I usually love science-fiction fantasy novels where an author incorporates a supernatural world like the “Maximum Ride” series by James Patterson, or the “Gone” series by Michael Grant. But for me to love any novel – romance, realistic fiction, fantasy or science fiction – the plot has to be well written where I want to know what happens next. I didn’t feel that way with this book at all. In fact, I found myself wishing I never picked up this novel to read in the first the plot never came together. Even when there was a conflict and a goal, I didn’t find the enemies to be terrifying. I wasn’t on the edge of my seat with fear. Instead, I found them humorous and stupid.