Duocarns - The Arrival
Pat McCraw
Elicit Dreams Publishing
222 Pages
Reviewed by Sandra Scholes
Blurb: The story: On the hunt for their mortal enemies, the Bacanis, five attractive aliens – Duocarns warriors find themselves stranded with their space cruiser near the Canadian city of Calgary.
The crew possesses some unusual talents…
Their leader, Solutosan, is the first to gradually become aware of the erotic fascination that he holds for humans. The street-worker Aiden manages to snare him for herself.
The gay warrior Tervenarius also attracts the attentions of an earthling - David, the estate agent.
Although he resists at first, David is not to be put off and things soon escalate.
The Duocarns suspect that the Bacanis are also on Earth. Despite the distractions of their amorous adventures, the warriors continue their pursuit.
After landing in Vancouver, the Bacanis have rather less luck than their foes.
Led by their unscrupulous, power-hungry captain Bar, they embark on a secret campaign of robbery and murder amongst the unsuspecting human population. Bar establishes a drug empire – but never guesses that his nemesis is still closing in on him.
Review:
The story is about five aliens who have crash landed on Earth and have to survive, but have the yearning to feel normal in relationships they have made with humans. These five are the Duocarns warriors who want to track down the Bacanis, their foes but who get caught up in what it is like to feel human emotions with these humans. Solutosan and Aiden prove to be lovers while Tervenarius and David become closer than one would expect.
The Duocarns, though they are aliens do share traits common to humans, the ability to bicker being one of them, which is hilarious, even at the beginning of this novel. The interplay between Solutosan, Meodern and Chrom is the sort that would happen during a long expedition like theirs where they have had to live with each other for long periods of time in an enclosed area. Space travel isn’t easy and McCraw makes this obvious from the start. Tervenarius serves as the comic relief with his skin cream incident while Solutosan tries to remain serious and calm as their leader. This only goes so far when he tries to sell platinum to a jeweller and has to dash out as a result. On their own planet they might be considered hardened warriors, but on Earth they have a sense of childlike vulnerability.
As the Duocarns are in the middle of a crisis, Earthling Aiden is also in the middle of hers. Aiden is a street worker who tries to get addicts off of heroin and her latest encounter with Ben proves to be the sort she has to get used to – that addicts can relapse and go back onto being dependant on the drug. McCraw knows how to show the subtle differences between the aliens and the earthlings with their own experiences. The Duocarns getting to what they would consider as an alien planet, coping with all the trouble that brings and Aiden feeling trapped on Earth, hoping to contribute to helping the society she lives in. Once on Earth, the Duocarns have to think hard on what they can contribute to their new society using their alien skills, hoping they won’t draw too much attention to the fact they are very alien indeed. Aiden wants to find the right man, but as she is a charity worker who works mainly with recovering addicts, she thinks she is unlikely to find one.
Over half the story is devoted to Solutosan and Aiden becoming friends then lovers and later it’s Tervenarius’s turn to find his. Tervenarius has been sent to find another place for them to stay, and still wonders why humans have chosen to fly using flimsy internal combustion engines in such ways to get places. David’s former lover has just walked out on him, and he is single again as well as unhappy. Club owner, John had been cheating on him, and after taking his infidelity for so long, he thought he might as well confront him. John leaving his life isn’t so bad after all when he meets Tervenarius, the lover of fungi and poisons, he can’t get enough of David, even if he accidentally hurt his ankle trying to fly when on mescaline. Terv is a new experience for David as he is so used to men being difficult for him to understand. Terv’s alien nature interests him enough to want to give him a chance.
With a list of characters and an excerpt for Duocarns Part 2 this first novel is well worth the on-line price put on it. Not only does it explain its list of colourful characters, it also wants the reader to feel as though they are part of this strange, yet beautiful alien community.
McCraw is one of those writers who want the reader to see into the heart of the character, no matter how good or bad they appear to be. This is one of her stronger traits when engaging the reader to the two main characters. As most of the story is concerned with the four main characters, the other aliens and their enemies are only filler in the background of the story. This isn't a bad thing, it's more of a necessity as the four characters are so interesting.
The book comes complete with a list of the characters, which is needed as there are a lot of them even though they are interesting in their own ways. They all have personal issues and problems they can't sort out without someone around them to help out and this helps the story move along well, especially for the main two characters.
Pat took up a lot of her time getting Duocarns: The Arrival translated into English without there being any problems understanding what was being read. Her fears can be pushed away as the story is easy enough to read and hardly comes across as being originally in a foreign language (bearing in mind how some translated Japanese manga can come across as sketchy at best). On first looking, the cover is a sweet and serious one about one man saving another's life, one being alien, the other human and in desperate need of help. It's about unconditional love. It's the shot of a fleeting moment when two men become interested in each other's lives and fall in love. I liked the cover as soon as I saw it, and thought it good enough to part sell the book. Readers will want to get to know more about the characters, I did and found myself laughing out loud at what they got up to before I got into more serious sections of the novel.
Verdict: Duocarns as the first in a series of novels does not disappoint - it just makes readers want more!
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