Review by Booklist Review
Deep in the woods, Russ encounters a strange group of people who are tracking a weird animal. Turns out, this animal is a dangerous alien cat-beast. Thanks to some extraordinary marksmanship, Russ manages to help locate and kill the beast. Impressed by Russ' skills with a rifle, the group decides to adopt--or draft--him into their mission, which is to secretly hunt down and exterminate dangerous alien creatures that threaten people's lives. In the meantime, Russ gets a scientist-type girlfriend to join him on this mysterious quest. Of course, it turns out things are much more complicated than just pest extermination. The set-up at times is reminiscent of Men In Black, but while MIB played things for laughs, Intergalactic is more high-space adventure. One caveat is that the book comes with an appendix listing all the strange terms, names, and places contained in the narrative, often a sure sign of authorial over-complication. But then, a lot of fans of space adventures like such complication. For those who like space adventures with mystery, intrigue, and some scary beasties, this will be an engaging read.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bishop's feel-good sci-fi debut kicks off when drifter Russ Wesley discovers a mysterious stone among his recently deceased grandfather's collection of oddities. Russ recruits Nina Hosseinzadeh, aspiring electrical engineer and "the smartest woman in all Evanstown ," to help him identify the stone, hoping to sell it for quick cash to save his family's crumbling bookstore. Nina, meanwhile, needs money to help out her terminally ill father. Instead, the stone attracts hostile extraterrestrials, plunging the pair into interstellar drama. The eponymous organization arrives to dispatch the hostiles--and, upon witnessing Russ's superior marksmanship, forcibly conscript him into intergalactic pest control. But Nina also wants a lucrative (if potentially lethal) job with the company, putting the pair in fierce competition--until looming danger threatens to destroy their careers as exterminators before they can begin. After a slow start, Bishop ramps things up, imbuing this romp with solid worldbuilding, a broad sense of adventure, and a sensitive emotional core. With gruesome alien battles, layered conflict, and a sprinkling of humor, this is sure to find an audience. Agent: Caitlin Blasdell, Lisa Dawson Assoc. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Loaded with gunslinging action, Bishop's sci-fi debut fires a little off-center when it comes to character writing and ingenuity. Let's just say that listeners won't need a sniper scope to spot the ending. When Russ unwittingly lures a monstrous alien to small-town Louisiana with a stone found in his late grandfather's curiosity collection, he gets the chance to quit his aimless drifting and shoot for the stars (literally). Complicating matters are the android enforcers who'll wipe his memory of being rescued by space exterminators if he doesn't sign a contract for employment in alien pest control. Russ hates contracts. And then, there is the busty electrical engineer to whom he showed the stone, Nina, who filches it out from under him. Reading Russ's and Nina's chapters respectively, Scott Brick and Suzanne Freeman do all they can to uplift the text into an adventure worth the time, chewing gamely on lines like, "I shouldn't have corrected you. I am a scientist, but I'm also being a snob," and "Shoot it in the butthole," but whether they succeed depends largely on the listener. VERDICT This largely misses the mark. Libraries may want to take a pass.--Lauren Kage
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