Glory Lane

Alan Dean Foster

Seeth, the drop out rebel, and Kerwin, the clean cut college student, help rescue a man who was getting arrested at a bowling alley. Yet this was no ordinary man. He had seven fingers on one hand, and his bowling ball defied the laws of physics when picking up a 7 - 10 split.

As Kerwin and Seeth rush Arthwit Rail and his odd bowling ball out of the alley, the policemen follow them. Yet these are no ordinary policemen, either. When Seeth throws bowling balls at them while escaping, the balls just bounce off them, barely slowing them down. The guns they fire shoot a ray of sorts that melts anything in its way.

In their escape, they accidently pick up Miranda, the typical airhead female who seems to have no point in life but to go to college to meet guys. Soon this group is escaping from this "backward planet" with Rail, who has had to reveal his alien identity. He also mentions that he has "borrowed" the spaceship without permission, and his bowling ball companion is actually another alien he "liberated" from the group chasing them. Great...they are helping a thief and kidnapper.

Alan Dean Foster writes a fun tale. The primitive humans are poked fun at by all the more further advanced people. Rail had chosen their planet to hide out because it was still considered unpopulated by the sentient members of the universe. Soon, Kerwin, Seeth, and Miranda meet more alien life forms than they can count. And early in the book we find out that the most important thing in the universe is...SHOPPING.

While I enjoyed this, I couldn't stick with it for any length of time. I fell asleep over it a couple times when I did not think I was tired. Foster's imagination shines in here. But by the end of the story, it was more and more implausible to me.