Core: 2/9. So-so.

Alien that has the form of bacteria, acts as a parasite and communicate with heroine by sending scio-linguistic impulses. It can heal the host and therefore resurrects the girl thrice.

Character: 1/9. Terrible.

Jessica: the unlucky heroine but I don’t agree with her two choices:

1. Jessica feared the rapist to the extent that she forgot calling the police or other people she trusted once she saw him. But if she let him escape, he would definitely do the same thing to other girls.
2. Although the alien treated her and consistently tried to accost and appease her politely, yet she chose to suicide instead of reporting both things to the authority. Suicide means silence, which probably caused the alien to infect others through her died body like how it dealt with the bear.

However I thought Jessica was mentally damaged after she was raped even the alien who was able to fix her dilapidated body and resurrect her thrice could not heal her mental illness.

Gran: Jessica’s dying grandma whose story is unrelated to the plot

Mom: Jessica’s neglected mom

rapist: a man who cheated Jessica that he was sent by her mom

Plot: 2/9. Bad, depressive and Boring. Author seemed not to know the art of cliffhanger and her heroine often died of unreasonable hysteria.

9/9/2001 Jessica hitchhiked and checked herself in the campground outhouse. After seeing two deep slices puckered down the inside of her right thigh, she panicked and died. The driver insisted on taking her right to Gran’s.

8/9/2001 A rapist claimed he was sent by her mom and coaxed her into his car. Then he raped her in the forest and killed her with his knife. Alien jumped to her and fixed her from the dead bear.

10/9/2001 Alien eliminated excess fluid through her pores so as to repair heroine. She asked whether Alien could repair her Gran. Alien confessed that it rode around in the bear after having their air crash and then found died Jessica. She found the rapist and she was too panicked that he would kill her and died.

11/9/2001 Again shocked by 911, she doubted everything on Alien even it fixed her. Feeling the threat inside her probably, she committed suicide with the mirror.

World and Others: 0/9. Crap.

What’s the alien’s purpose and origin? What did it want from Jessica? Why did they think they will also die with Jessica rather than jumping to another host? Why did the bear die? Why did the alien reject the hospital?

Overall: 1/9. Terrible for me to blackmail Kelly Robson.

Since this is one of the author’s first fiction, I would not like to blackmail her at first. But I changed my mind after I found that someone commented on her Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach that her entire plot is based on characters doing stupid and dangerous things like this unreasonable heroine and therefore almost none of her characters were lovable. It’s somewhat against my principle of science fiction, that is to find the miracle created by the intelligent, and will therefore I blackmail Kelly Robson forever.