This would be a fairly standard first contact story, save for one thing; the author has set it in his adoptive homeland of Northern Ireland, presciently in the time of the Good Friday Agreement (which wasn't actually signed until two years after the novel was written). All the features are there; an uneasy peace, dissident terrorist groups persuing their own agendas, and a non-sectarian police force with its own uneasy past. McDonald even almost gets the name right ('Northern Ireland Police Service' vs. 'Police Service of Northern Ireland' - though that wasn't going to be difficult, let's be honest.)

Using that backdrop adds to the human protagonists' motivations, conflicts and problems, and elevates what might have been an ordinary novel into something rather different. ( )