MOVING JACK

Mars’ quirky cross-genre debut is a Romeo-and-Juliet tale with a vampire and an alien who meet when humans rebel against the extraterrestrials on Earth. 

In 2025, an alien species known as the Staraban lands on Earth. With a warning that the planet is mere decades away from death, the Staraban promise to relocate humans to an alternative planet. Humans are understandably wary, and some form the Humans Against Relocation Movement, headquartered in California. HARM’s co-leader Jack Daniels, a hacker/blogger, has been gathering intel on the aliens. She’s also been a vampire for the past five years, although only her friend Aurora “Rory” Espinoza knows this. Hacking the aliens’ computers, Jack ultimately has a confrontation with Tarc, the Alien Relocation Cooperative commander. Like other Staraban, he’s virtually identical to humans, but Jack finds him especially alluring. Neither puts a lot of effort into resisting their mutual attraction, but trouble may lie elsewhere, as earthlings question the true motive of the Vrolan, the aliens who asked the Staraban to relocate humans. An abduction occurs, and the ensuing rescue demands that HARM and ARC work together. Although this prospective series opener gleefully tackles a variety of genres, Mars focuses primarily on comedy. The Staraban, for example, seem particularly fascinated by pizza, and Rory “tortures” an alien captive by stealing his French fries. However, other genres are equally discernible, from erotica (occasional explicit scenes between Jack and Tarc) to romance as their physical intimacy becomes something more. With aliens looking just like humans, some characters are indistinguishable; Jack eventually befriends Jill, who’s essentially the human version of the vampire. But Mars’ witty, dialogue-laden narrative begets standouts like Rory, who’s oddly immune to Jack’s vampiric glamour, and Hal, Jack’s readily available AI that, at some point, takes over Jack’s blog and proves surprisingly narcissistic.

A delightful story that shows supernatural beings can be romantic—and also very funny.