A three-mile-tall alien comes to rest in rural America, a colossal spike protruding from its torso. In apparent homage to the alien, a serial killer’s victims are stabbed and carved with its patterns. David, the local sheriff, already overwhelmed by his sleepy town’s rapid growth since the alien landed, is totally out of his depth.
This intriguing SF premise is woefully underexplored, its high concept reduced to a metaphor for the conflict between rural America and modernity as the alien triggers an influx of outsiders. The narrative is pure crime writing, linked to the alien by hand-wavy tech, but never tackling the central mystery of its existence. Whereas Roadside Picnic succeeds in creating existential unease through the unknowably alien, Godfall’s alien detritus feels like a narrative deus ex machina.
As a crime novel, it’s frustrating. Passages from the point of view of the killer, who demonstrably lacks motive, undercut my desire to solve the puzzle and my investment in David’s theories – I was already aware they were mundane dead ends rather than the speculative leaps needed.
David seems incapable of detective work and frankly comes across a bit dim and emotionally obtuse. He doesn’t drive the investigation, instead events happen to him as he struggles to piece it together. The plot relies on him being incurious about the details that matter – the leitmotif of the killings, the lab worker, the FBI. His motivations were confusingly passive; the causal tissue missing, leaving David as a character who I never really understood what was going on in his head.
The SF premise appears to exist to explore anxieties about a community overwhelmed by an incomprehensible outside force. That’s potentially interesting social SF, but neither the alien nor the characters are developed enough to make that metaphor meaningful, while the crime procedural isn’t strong enough to carry the book. The mystery of the killer’s identity did pay off, but the poor detective work, the hollow main character, and the criminal lack of follow-through on the high concept all killed my enjoyment of this book.
