This was my first novel by this author and I was impressed with his writing stlye, plotting and his characters. The characters are completely believable and you become immediately invested into what's happening with them and will they be ok. The way the development of the characters is written is so that it is part of the story makes the book even better, you feel more involved as the characters grow and it feels more like part of the plot development vs extra to it.
One of the key pieces of the plot is the author's rewriting of history to include aliens and their role in history, it was a refreshing and interesting take on things as he did not rewrite history but merely expanded it to include a different perspective. For me this made the storyline feel more real, as he refered to events that did happen and happened the way we know them to but just included aliens into them. I loved that his alternate history was chronicled into comic books that people read but just believed where fiction. What a great nod to comic book readers and the geek in all of us.
The book is written as a ya novel but the only thing that felt ya to me was the age of the characters. There was no talking down or avoidance of deeper or traumatic issues that sometimes occurs in the ya genre. This is definately one of those novels that is tagged as ya but can be enjoyed by any age group.
I enjoyed this novel immensely and will be waiting for the next installment to find out what happens to the characters, how things develop with the aliens and for just pure pleasure.