Reviewed by Hilary Hawkes for Readers' Favorite

AJ Aaron’s The Hawk, or Other Worlds is an entertaining science fiction mystery novel. Dave leads an unexciting life with an unexciting but stable job and not much money. He’d like things to be better, and wonders if he should have worked harder at school like his successful older brother John. Then Dave manages to get into the elite Velvet Hammer bar/restaurant and things begin to change rapidly and unbelievably. He meets Ekaterina who gives him vast amounts of money in return for delivering mysterious parcels to select people. With all this new wealth, Dave gives up his job, moves, and dates Ellen – the receptionist at Velvet Hammer. Curiosity gets the better of Dave and he discovers that the parcels contain crystals with the essence of nearly extinct life–forms, which take over the bodies of the people who touch them. They say they can save the human race from annihilating itself through its narcissistic behavior. The hosts of these creatures experience character transformations. Hosts may become better people, but in allowing this they merely give themselves up to an alternative conformity.

Aaron’s entertaining and thoroughly readable writing style causes the plot to bounce along at a good pace and I was hooked from the first page. The story is told from the first person point of view and the characters have terrific personality, especially Dave. There is a great deal of humour in some of Dave’s interactions with others, but at the same time the reader is kept in suspense as the story turns into something more sinister. This is a very well-written book that gives the reader much to ponder about the human needs for beliefs and conformity and our lack of awareness in many ways. Are we are capable of more, or is it true that, as the quote from Michael Crichton’s The Lost World tells us at the start of Aaron’s book, “Any other view of our species is a self-congratulatory delusion”?