INVASION

A man and a woman struggle with new powers and missing memories as the world is attacked by alien creatures in Mizushima’s sci-fi debut.

A young woman awakens in a hotel bathtub, unaware of how she got there, or even her own name. She soon finds that everyone else in the hotel, including the maid in the hallway, is asleep. She determines from a logbook that her own name is Olivia, and that someone named Takashi signed in with her. The city’s power is out, and unfortunately, the only people who are awake are military types who are trying to capture her. That is, until Olivia encounters fellow amnesiac Takashi. Both have surprising abilities that allow them to defend themselves—such as moving objects with their minds, manipulating energy, and taking flight. Olivia and Takashi quickly learn that the world has been invaded by droves of tentacled aliens. They team up with a resistance group, using their own powers to protect Earth from the monsters. The duo’s memories, meanwhile, slowly return, enlightening them as to the nature of their relationship. It soon appears that the only way to put a stop to the invasion is to face a decidedly more formidable foe. Although Mizushima’s novel eventually becomes a series of battle scenes, it keeps the mystery from the beginning alive; for example, the author doesn’t reveal the origin of Olivia and Takashi’s abilities for some time. Likewise, intermittent flashbacks provide welcome insights, despite sometimes interrupting the action. The prose is generally colloquial, but it still effectively caters to the readers’ senses: “They shoot at [Olivia] with their laser-firing space guns, which gives out a unique kind of laser blaster sound as they fire, a bit like those laser sounds on those old cartoons.” However, there’s an excess of filler dialogue; variations of “ha ha,” in particular, appear throughout, even when dialogue tags specify laughter.

A novel featuring solid action and effectively mysterious elements.