softcover, published Peggy Bright Books, 2013.
This book was funny, clever, and throughly enjoyable. It has a faintly fannish air to it, and a line of familiar character names help that, but discounting them, the stories are still rolicking good fun. It’s told in first person, about a woman who wants to live on a farm of her own and have animals, and a pleasant country life. The amount of money she has to achieve this is limited so she ends up going further and further out, until she finds a place she can afford, ramshackle, poorly fenced, but it’s within budget and it will provide what she wants. So she buys it.
She buys two donkeys and a draft horse at a local sale, makes local friends, enjoys visits from her ex-flatmate and his flying dragon (they provide mountains of solar panels so she can stay electrified) and then there’s the neighbours, the alien ones that is, little grey aliens who are polite, helpful, and pleasant to have around. Yes, of course, this is SF, what do you expect? SF writers tend to add stuff to the mundane – until it isn’t that mundane any longer. And then there’s the evolution of her computer… I know computers don’t usually evolve, what part of, this is what SF writer’s do, didn’t you get? Followed by a journalist who comes to find a really really exciting story and ends by heading off into the mountain after something else entirely. Lovely comeuppance! And when I finished reading this, I smiled, sighed, and wished there was more, I hope for a sequel. So head off to Peggy Bright books and buy a few copies, good for those who like gentle humour, the fannish community, SF wit, aliens next door, and the companionship of equines. Buy this book. If enough do, the writer may give us another one.