Beyond the Veil of Stars

Beyond the Veil of Stars reads like an autobiography of a boy who spends his childhood with his father chasing evidence of aliens and then grows up to be one. The tone is matter-of-fact, which helped me buy into the premise of a universe in which "people" can walk through "intrusions" on their own planet and come out the other side on another planet in the form of a native of that planet.
The characters and the relationships between them are what takes Robert Reed's book more than a cut above the average science fiction. The evolution of the relationship between the protagonist, Cornell, and his spaceship-chasing father over the years is the human thread that carries the story. Along the journey, other relationships, both short- and show more long-lived, are realistically developed, as are the characters. For instance, Cornell's missing mother haunts the book through photographs and memories, then comes on scene during what is for Cornell a life-changing cameo.
Other wonderfully drawn characters, who age or mature along with Cornell and his perception of them, are his neighbors, the "Petes", who act as surrogate uncle and aunt, Porsche Neal, Cornell's basketball-playing, space-travelling girlfriend, who is full of alien surprises, Logan, a military-type/hero-gone-mad supervisor of alien missions, and the hapless Jordick, who in the words of the immortal Leonard H. McCoy, "should have stood in bed" rather than enrolled for duty on the alien world of High Desert.
The story unfolds with Cornell traveling with his father and Pete, who for the simple reason of being a kind, caring person, chauffeurs them from one alien-spotting to another. The trio seek manifestations of alien landings, which are large glass circles in the ground. Toward the end of the book these circles again play an important role in Cornell's and his father's lives. One day the earth suddenly "everts" so that instead of the usuall starry sky, the people of earth find themselves looking up at a reflection of the earth. This event is referred to as the "Change" for the rest of the book and as with the Kennedy assasination or the bombing of the Twin Towers, everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing the day the "Change" took place. Scientists begin to take a serious look at the possibility of aliens at that point, although only a specially chosen elite have access to that knowledge.
This is a book worth reading twice for the elegance and complexity of its characters and their relationships, with the science fiction aspect mainly serving as the setting, as it should be. show less

Life changes dramatically after the sky is mysteriously transformed into a mirror-image of the surface of the earth, blotting out the stars, and the close relationship of a young boy to his UFO-obsessed, embittered father grows increasingly troubled. As a grownup, completely estranged from his father, the son is recruited by a super-secret government organization that knows the reason behind the sky's transformation. Completely out of public view, it is attempting to learn more and to exploit the new situation for the benefit (as they see it) of humankind. Vivid characters, sensitive, bathetic story, fascinating plot twists.

I tried

This novel because I liked several short stories of Mr Reed's in various anthologies.
Started off really slow with really nothing going on at all. Kid riding around staring at women's shirts pretty much covers the first third of the book.
Then things just get strange, not in the sense of happenings, but in the characters seeming paranoid and disjointed.
DNF

Good writing, weak plot and surprises, boring.

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