The Conquest

August 9, 2004
In this humorous UFO thriller, the sequel to bestseller Coonts's Saucer
(2003), pilot Charlotte "Charley" Pine is hired to fly a French spaceplane to the moon, where millionaire Pierre Artois is building a base. Once there, she discovers that Artois has equipped the base with an antigravity beam projector and plans to make himself and his malevolent wife, Julie, rulers of the world. Charley promptly returns to Earth to warn everybody. Meanwhile, Newton Chadwick, a mad scientist in the pay of the French, kidnaps saucer-expert Egg Cantrell and forces him to fly to the moon in the original Roswell saucer that landed in 1947. Egg's nephew Rip Cantrell and Charley steal another flying saucer from the Smithsonian, and soon saucers and other borrowed alien high-tech are in pitched battle over the moon. Later, French pilot Jean-Paul Lalouette (perhaps the book's most engaging character) is determined to go down fighting and nearly turns the tables in a gripping aerial duel of saucers up and down the East Coast. Cartoonish characters with names like Senator Blohardt and Joe Bob Hooker add to the fun. Agent, Robert Gottlieb.

August 1, 2004
This felicitous, lightweight combination of thriller and sf is the second adventure of Rip Cantrell and Charley Pine involving flying table settings (the first: " Saucer," 2002). To begin things, Coonts introduces the original 1947 Roswell, New Mexico, saucer (the saucer of " Saucer" was a Saharan denizen) and a scientist who, if not mad at first, is driven mad by the need to keep its discovery secret. Jumping to the present, Coonts gives us Rip at loose ends while Charley flies a French space plane to the Moon. (How the French developed that particular piece of hardware remains unexplained, as does quite a lot else in the book.) Charley soon encounters a mad French brewer and his definitely evil wife, who plan to use stolen saucer technology to conquer the world. Charley makes an excellent whistle-blower, however, and although the rest of the yarn is fast-paced (featuring superb flying sequences, among other exciting things), its issue is never really in doubt. Coonts' tongue is in cheek for much of the story, as it has been in some of his later Jake Grafton books, but this is not likely to raise the hackles of anyone except the humor-impaired. Readers: enjoy. Libraries: provide.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)