Patrick Patterson and the World of Others – Review

I read an author interview at Kindle Author and decided to purchase this book.

I really enjoyed James Edward Fryar's book, Patrick Patterson and the World of Others. It's a fresh voice and a different story from SciFi I've recently read.

The story (excerpted from the book page):

For almost thirteen years, Patrick Patterson has lived a quiet, simple life in the tiny town at the edge of Texas, called Farwell, but he is suddenly whisked away by a rag tag group of warriors and others across the United States to discover his true identity and a destiny clouded in mystery.
Never in his wildest dreams did he think that he'd walk through an underground city filled with citizens from across the universe, contend with powerful enemies from the edge of the galaxy, or travel to the Arctic Circle on a high speed train.
Now, he must decide what he truly desires and whether he even wants to take up the mantle of hero...or alien.

So we're in the present, with aliens among us, and we don't even know it. Patrick didn't know it either, until right before his thirteenth birthday. Then he gets to meet these aliens--up close and personal, and some are pretty gruesome.

Fryar seamlessly melds the fantastic into the common place, and accepting the story is easy. The characters help with this, as they are believable--especially their emotions. The story moved along well, but wasn't predictable. There were a few glitches (aren't there always?), such as irregular sentence structure:

"Patrick found a greasy woman cooking at the stove that he assumed was Pratt's wife"

??the stove is Pratt's wife?? But these were few and offset by some nice language:

"...cars like tiny bubbles of oxygen through the vein of the enclosed Lincoln Tunnel, and back out, into the beating heart of Times Square".

I particularly like the overall presentation; what is shown in the prologue, was important to the entire story, and ties up nicely at the end.

But it isn't quite The End, because Patrick, after he escapes the nasty, alien baddies, still has to make his trip to a distant planet (the true World of Others) and face his destiny. I look forward to the next book.