The Humans by Matt Haig
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This very boring novel features an alien who comes to Earth to destroy it because his species thinks humans are illogical and self destructive and thus a danger to the universe if they acquire superior technical knowledge. The alien, in human form, quickly begins to appreciate humans and their illogical emotions. That much is no spoiler as it is pretty much the published description of the book in Goodreads and libraries. It is also pretty much the entire plot, which is the main reason it is so boring. It is very well-trodden ground in literature, movies, and TV. The author has added nothing to the existing genre.
Here’s a list, in chronological order, of several very similarly themed works involving human-looking or humanoid aliens with that initial view of humans: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 movie/1940 short story); Childhood’s End (1953), although the Overlords look like devils; Star Trek (1966) – Spock and the Borg are humanoid and both consider humans inferior, but only the Borg are hostile; Mork & Mindy (1978+ TV series); V (1983+ TV miniseries); Starman (1984); Star Trek: Voyager (1997+ several episodes); The Humans (this book – 2013); The Orville (2017+ TV series); Resident Alien (2021 TV series). This is just a sample; others exist. There are others where the aliens aren’t human/humanoid, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) but have a similar story line.
The plots of these vary somewhat, with differing degrees of initial hostility toward us; some aliens becoming appreciative of humans or affectionate and protective, and others leaving humans alone to fend for themselves, but generally change their initial view of us to a more positive one. The point is that there is absolutely nothing new in this book and it doesn’t even having the redeeming humor of several of the listed works. The only “humor” is the running gag present in every one of the above where aliens think we’re hideously ugly and can’t understand our illogical self-destructiveness like littering and fighting. That grows old real fast. The writing is a mundane narrative.