“When level-headed Francie arrives in Roswell, New Mexico, for her college roommate’s UFO-themed wedding—complete with a true-believer bridegroom—she can’t help but roll her eyes at all the wide-eyed talk of aliens, which obviously don’t exist. Imagine her surprise, then, when she is abducted by one. Odder still, her abductor is far from what the popular media have led her to expect, with a body like a tumbleweed and a mass of lightning-fast tentacles. Nor is Francie the only victim of the alien’s abduction spree. Before long, he has acquired a charming con man named Wade, a sweet little old lady with a casino addiction, a retiree with a huge RV and a love for old Westerns, and a UFO-chasing nutjob who is thoroughly convinced the alien intends to probe them and/or take over the planet. But the more Francie gets to know the alien, the more convinced she becomes that he’s not an invader. That he’s in trouble and she has to help him. Only she doesn’t know how—or even what the trouble is.”
Part of the charm of reading a Connie Willis novel is that she remains one of the few female hard sci-fi writers still around. She’s written a bunch of exceptional novels, some with humor, but generally great reads. So, yes, there is going to be but…But, The Road to Roswell comes off as an underwhelming tale seemly designed to appeal to readers who don’t generally read this genre. It’s like a Lifetime or Hallmark Movie Channel film – with its mixture of alien-abduction themes, melded with a road trip to Roswell (and Las Vegas) where we interact with Men in Black, marriage chapels filled with Elvis impersonators, and assorted people dressed in all forms of aliens.
And it's a romantic comedy.
It all only works once in a while, but Willis tries hard to make the communication between Francie and Indy (named due to its whip-like tentacles) work like in the movie Arrival, but again, it’s overshadowed by the trope filled characters she creates to help Francie with whatever the mission of this alien truly is. One of the biggest flaws is Wade, the male-hero of any Hallmark TV film. While the reader will love down-to-earth aspects of Francie, Wade (whom Indy picks up next) is so obviously hiding something that by the eventual reveal falls flat. Even as I read the book, I wondered why Francie could not figure this out. She seemed very intelligent and is very capable of working stuff out, why she failed to catch on makes her look fairly stupid.
Other characters include Lyle, your typical conspiracies nut-job when it comes to aliens, the supposed adductions and Roswell in modern times, as well as 1947. Joseph, who is riding around the Southwest in his RV…The Outlaw, and who (because everything in this type of story lives at the corner of convenience and coincidence) is not the fully the man he says he is, and Eula Mae, a sweet, gray-haired old lady who is also a card shark.
Ultimately, it’s a fine book to read on the beach or airplane, for while it tries to be deep, it comes off more as lit-entertainment. It’s filled with some humor, a lot of Western clichés, and references to alien movies from eons past up to today, and runs a bit overlong (and ends on a cliffhanger of a sort), but Willis is still a great writer. She has much more interesting and fun work than this, so your mileage may vary.