XAN makes some big promises. It also has some big shoes to fill after Alien, Xtro, and the rest. Can author Patrick Tilley place his Xan among the superstars of '80s alien horror?
No way. Not even close.
Tilley had previously written a well received first contact story, Fade-out, so it's hard to tell what the hell he was doing here. He front loads his story with markers of thriller verisimilitude, noting that Hays, Kansas is a real locale and praying that nothing like this story ever happens, anywhere ... but he bungles everything afterwards, delivering a comically inept mess. The titular Xan is a ripe example, never rising above a generic bug eyed monster and spending most of his time smugly intoning about us pathetic humans (with our tiny brains!) as he body snatches and mind controls his way through the cast. Xan's species uses some ethereal "life force" as energy to cross the stars, and we just happen to be full of it! If he can gain control of the "green and browns" (the military, doy), he'll have an easy time filling up the tank for his next galactic jaunt. The stilted alien speak gets old and starts to read as parodic, and there's no originality in Tilley's rote portrayal of moth eaten monster tropes. Far from some horrific '80s techno terror beyond our comprehension, Xan comes off as a dusty retro dullard. His full title, Xan-Ubara-Q'han, even sounds like a fakey yellow peril villain from the 1800s, and his supercomputer is named Tariq for God's sake! Tilley's human characters don't fare any better and spend most of their time explaining the plot to each other. We never become invested in their struggle, and the story never surprises us, feebly offering potboiler twists and turns that go nowhere.
The novel goes on and on, filling pages with a whole lot of nothing as leads Clay and Laura Williams fret over their kids and yak it up with an endless cast of interchangeable military suits. Every so often, Xan deigns to grace us with his presence. The story is simply pathetic until black GI Carmody enters, and then it becomes downright racist with Tilley's fumbling attempts at AAVE:
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| What a jive turkey |
"Heh-heh, foxy lady, don' try'n mess with D-C. Yo' liable to git one million volts right up yo' ass. You jive? Yo' lookin' at one ba-a-d mother." Sheesh! Our cardboard heroine Laura escapes his clutches easily enough, not that we care one way or another. A spoiler for the ending: eventually, Xan drains the whole cast, zips over to LA to zap a whole stadium full of puny humans, and then flies off into the galactic night, his energy cells overflowing with souls. Good riddance to him and to Tilley's wretched novel.
XAN earns a miserable 0/4 rating and can sit with the worst of the worst published dreck.
Grafton Books, 1986
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