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Review by Kayleigh Marie Edwards  I approached ‘The Terminal’ as an Amber Fallon virgin – this story is my first experience of her work, and what a jolly good time I had! For those who hate spoilers, turn back now, for there will be a few scattered throughout this review. So this is the story of a dude who finds that his entire world crumbles around him at an airport terminal. Strange and disastrous things start to happen, and it quickly becomes clear that this is some sort of apocalyptic, alien invasion. After witnessing the death of the love of his life, he manages to evade death himself and begins his survival mission. There were a couple of opportunities I thought that Fallon missed with her story. Firstly, it took me quite a while to ‘settle in’ with the protagonist, because I found him quite difficult to empathise with. The story begins more or less immediately in the action of the alien invasion, so we hit the ground running. This makes for an exciting opening for sure, but I found it difficult to care that much about the protagonist’s plight, even when his boyfriend is killed, because I didn’t know either of them. In my opinion, we might have benefitted from a slower opening, in which we get to know the main character a bit first before we join him on his quest. It may have made his boyfriend’s death tragic, rather than sad, and I would have felt more on board with him for the rest of his journey. Or maybe that’s just me being sociopathic. There’s a sad moment when our protagonist, in the course of trying to save a young girl, accidentally kills the young girl. This is just heart wrenching, especially when a character he meets later turns out to be the girl’s father. Our protagonist wrestles a bit with the decision of whether or not to confess, and I kept waiting for this moment of drama to erupt, but it doesn’t. I felt that was a shame, because it was such a great set-up and would have worked as a brilliant ‘in’ for some deep character exploration (of course, this type of unveiling probably would have required the story to be at least twice as long in order to tell us everything). That’s enough criticism, so now let’s move on to what was great about ‘The Terminal’. Technically speaking, it’s a well-written piece that doesn’t use complicated language, but uses language well. It’s very unpretentious and suits regular readers and not-so-regular readers alike. My favourite thing about the story is that it reads like a Hollywood B-movie – and I mean that in the most complimentary way. The ‘aliens’ manage to have an ancient caveman feel so it’s bizarre that they appear to come from the sky – but bizarre in the best way… in the same way that Killer Klowns arriving from space in a circus tent is bizarre, for example. The way the characters speak, and the characters themselves, are stereotypical of what you might see in an 80’s B-move blockbuster, complete with all the excitement of Arnie hunting the Predator in the jungle (and a little bit of cheese to round it all off). It reads (sort of) like a movie pitch written by Michelle Rodriguez, you know – it’s that kind of action movie. At first, I struggled a little because I’m one of those readers who enjoys reading about the misery of others and I’m always looking for an expanse of emotions, but if this story had tried to do that, then it wouldn’t have worked as it does. This is a flat-out, survive-the-apocalypse-if-you-can, weapon wielding funfest of alien killing. Overall, this is a fun, fast-paced story that gives you what you want in terms of action and excitement. I wouldn’t recommend this to people who typically enjoy the likes of Jane Austin (then again, I wouldn’t recommend anything I enjoy to people who like Jane Austin!), but I would recommend it to anyone who fancies a short, fun read on a dark night.  Air travel during the holiday season. Yuck. Stupid people, flight delays, and long lines at security are pretty much the worst things ever - or so Dirk Bradley thought until a horde of bloodthirsty psychopaths from beyond the stars invaded the airport, cutting a swath of death and destruction through everything he knew and loved. Can he survive the attack and live to tell the tale? What hope does an average Joe have against a race of brutal killers bent on world domination? 
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