Dark Energy

Dark Energy, Robison Wells, Scholastic Inc., 2016

Contact with an alien race has finally happened. A mile-long spaceship has crashed, putting a 300-mile-long gouge in the American Midwest, killing thousands of people. Alice has been put into a local boarding school, because her father, who works for NASA, has to be at the crash site.

After several days, a hole is cut in the side of the ship, and the aliens start coming out, by the thousands. They call themselves the Guides, and they sure do look human. A bit of secret genetic testing shows that they really are human. They also speak a version of an old Native American language from the American Southwest. The humans get a look inside the ship, and see large rooms with lots of spilled blood. Perhaps the ship crashed because of a major battle or mutiny on board.

The Guides are not the only inhabitants of the ship. These other aliens are gray-skinned, much taller than the Guides, with lots of horns and claws and a nasty disposition. It seems that the Guides were practically slaves, and that a mutiny did cause the crash, and that the "bad guys" are not going to let the Guides go that easily.

Alice and a couple of friends have been taking care of a couple of the Guides. They suddenly find themselves racing across America, to a supposed sanctuary, knowing that, at any moment, they could be blasted into atoms.

This is a really good Young Adult novel. The author does a first-rate job from start to finish. It has plenty of action, and is very much worth reading.