Berlin, 1973 - a city divided by a wall thanks to the Cold War. An alien probe crash lands in Soviet territory so an American spy heads over to check it out. He find alien. Alien bad. Zzz...
I’d hoped this one would be as good as Jeff Loveness’ Groot book but I think that one was a one-off and Loveness ain’t the great writer I thought he was - Strange Skies Over East Berlin is really, really boring.
The alien thingy crashes somewhere and drives the humans crazee is an overplayed trope at this point and Loveness doesn’t do anything fresh with it here. I get the feeling he chose Cold War Berlin because he wanted to draw parallels between the Stasi, the East German secret police who famously spied on everyone, and the aliens’ powers, which reveals your mind’s secrets, but why is lost on me.
Besides that it’s just spy vs spy at a desk while a generic bad alien does generic bad alien stuff. The main character regrets losing his true love, the lady regrets her brother’s death, or some such trite wannabe-emotional pap - whatever. I also still don’t like Lisandro Estherren’s art since I last saw it in Donny Cates’ godawful Redneck series at Image.
A dull read through and through, Strange Skies Over East Berlin is instantly forgettable, hackeyned sci-fi guff.
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