“Their minds are howling storms.” Perfect commuting material this, particularly since the alien minds behind Southern trains decided to declare war on their customers and incarcerate humble bibliophiles on their trains and platforms. ‘Defenders’ hits the ground running – literally so, for one character – the first fifty pages veer dangerously close to giving the reader whiplash, switching characters, location and time lines dizzyingly. We join proceedings at a point which took the recent ‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ almost half its run time to arrive at. Aliens have attacked. They can read our minds! But there’s a plan! Then consequences! Then an even worse nightmare! Then a surprise! Sure, it’s a cheeseburger and there are contrivances and there are 11 separate uses of ‘erupted’ (gunfire, mainly) and McIntosh’s sexual adjectives seem to extend no further than ‘banging’ but what the hell, it’s an unpretentious read with a good pulpy sci-fi slant. Wouldn’t mind seeing both the Luytens and the Defenders rendered on screen (although those three legs might have to be rethought) plus, for those who care about such things, key players in the drama are women although McIntosh seems to realise half way through if Dominique had paid more attention to the consequences of what she was doing in the first place his book would be about a third the size. Or, indeed, about the length of his original short story. Still, I can see the likes of HBO turning each part of this novel into the usual ten episode series. It’s probably not self-conciously important enough for them though, not many life lessons to be gleaned beyond how not to mint a brand new life form.
