Earth Bound by J.A. Taylor

Most people despise tabloids; they see the ridiculous headlines and scoff. Even the journalists who provide those headlines, apparently. Matt Granger is one of them, a journalist working for a tabloid to pay the bills, all the while reminiscing about better days and reliving his fall from grace. Then, on an ordinary assignment with the rest of his team, he becomes a believer: He gets abducted.

The premise of this story is promising. Hard luck protagonist with a sackful of regrets, a pair of chipper secondary characters falling in love, oddballs talking about aliens, and of course the actual abduction. But where this book falls down is pretty much everywhere else. I couldn't finish it. It was too slow, it had too many errors, and Matt's inner dialogue nullified any rising tension.

The book opens with Matt waking up after his abduction. In some cases, starting a book right in the middle of the action can pay dividends in reader interest, but in this case it just doesn't have that effect. Matt slowly regains consciousness, and confusedly realizes what's happened to him--a series of scenes that are definitely not exciting enough to suck the reader in. And from there, readers are forced to constantly orient themselves to the story as the narrator jumps between the abduction, the backstory, and the back-backstory.

It seems like the author is attempting to explain every minute detail of Matt's thought process to readers, instead of allowing them to figure it out for themselves. This has the effect of draining nuance instead of adding it. And all this narration splits up scenes and saps tension. I really think it's a shame, because Earth Bound and its author, J.A. Taylor, have their moments of distinction. This is one of those books where an editor could have made all the difference.

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Copy source: provided free by the author
Genre: science fiction
Format: e-book

NB: I did not finish this book. My review reflects the first third of the novel.