ARC-review: Gini Koch – Alien Separation

Book 11 in the Katherine 'Kitty' Katt series, to be published May 5, 2015.
Genre: science fiction romance
Cover: very good, perhaps the best in the series, I love it.



Life’s never easy…
The Mastermind has finally been identified, but before Jeff and Kitty Katt-Martini can take him down, they, their daughter Jamie, Charles Reynolds, Paul Gower, Christopher White, and several others are zapped out of their solar system and into another.
Landing in scattered groups on various areas of Beta Eight in the Alpha Centauri system means getting the team back together will be a major issue. But it’s only one of the challenges they’ll face. Kitty and Company have to forge alliances with the wide variety of sentient natives on the planet while plotting to create a civil war and overthrow the king – who just may be a clone of one of their bitterest enemies, Ronaldo Al Dejahl.
Of course, to do this, they have to overcome an assortment of dangerous obstacles, protect a group of refugees, take mind reading lessons, and seek out unexpected new allies as they journey to the Centerpoint of the World.
And once they reach the All Seeing Mountain, new issues and surprises await. Because there’s more than a small war going on – they’re in the midst of the Alpha Centauri Civil War!


Kitty has just returned from her adventure in a parallel world (where she was married to Chuckie!), and is about to brief the team on her adventures, and be briefed on what happened while she was away. But first, she has to tell Chuckie the truth about the Mastermind. With the way everybody has been tiptoeing around him since they found out, he must be suspecting something is amiss. He isn’t the smartest guy on the planet for no reason.
But before they can start plotting and planning, their help is needed with Jeff’s wayward niece, who was secretly dating the mastermind, and has recently disappeared! So now they need to come up with a reasonable excuse to visit their political enemy …
And then it happens, just like in Star Trek, Kitty, Jeff, Jamie, and some of their closest friends are beamed out of the room and into outer space … And it is not a smooth ride either! It feels like they are fighting for control over the device, which might be the reason they all end up scattered over the planet. Kitty, Christopher and Chuckie end up closest together, in the Purple Land, with Kitty and Chuckie hanging in a tree. And then Christopher comes to rescue them, sitting astride a giant flying grasshopper … And then the fun starts.
Getting out of the tree, on the back of two other Katyhoppers, and trying to find the rest of the team. But first they will have to stay safe from the planet’s predators … like the scary flying snakipedes…
Lucky for Kitty, she still has her magical purse, and Bruno and a lot of poofs have come with her.

The next morning they set out on a search for the others, starting in the Brown Land, where they find Jeff, who is being looked at by the locals as a God. Kitty, Chuckie and Christopher apparently are Gods as well, and Kitty quickly bonds with two more animal species. Something that looks like a dog-pig, and a battlecat. The local residents are all looking like different earth rodents, but then human sized.

And on they journey for the All-Seeing-Mountain, when they are found by the flyboys, flying on some kind of big bird. But the happy reunion is disturbed when a large swarm of snakipedes is following their trail and they have to find a safe place for their fellow travellers and their animals, fast. Because even though Kitty finds enough weapons for the men and a machine gun in her purse, they can’t kill them all in time.


The group they travel with gets bigger and bigger when they keep finding their friends and the new friends those friends made. Different lands, different colors, different inhabitants, but they are mostly sentient and friendly. The adventures and new discoveries keep coming, but war is getting closer and closer upon them, and they will have to fight the King, before the planet is ravaged by other planets who are at war.
And at the All-Seeing-Mountain it is Kitty who realizes what has happened on this planet before, and who is the Father-of-the-Gods who told the people about them …


I really don’t want to spoil anything for you, as this book is just a giant adventure. Perhaps I have told you a few minor details, but believe me, there is much more to discover and enjoy in this book. I loved every page for it, and was really sorry to read the last page. I am already looking forward to the next book, as this one was truly awesome.


How to review a Gini Koch book? That is the question I always ask myself, as it is one of the most difficult things to do. So much happens, so many characters to keep track off, so many new developments I don’t want to spoil.
I think Gini Koch deserves to be in the Guinness Book of Records as author with the most awesome imagination alive, and the ability to keep her readers glued to the pages and never wanting the book to end.

11 stars.

© 2015 Reviews by Aurian