SPSFC Review: The Wrong Stop by Rex Burke

Blurb:

It’s ‘Starman’ meets ‘Paul’ in an irreverent, fast-paced SciFi caper that will keep you guessing until the end.

Ready for an adventure that’s out of this world?
Hutch has it all planned. College is out – backpacks ready for a summer train trip around the famous sights of Europe.
It means matching party animal, Sully, drink for drink, and dealing with conspiracy nut, Jed, who’s along for the ride. But it’s nothing that Hutch can’t handle – until they meet a mysterious stranger on the way to Berlin.

Faced with an extraordinary truth, they are drawn into a life-changing adventure – one that will have repercussions down the years.

Off the rails and on the run, they’re pursued from city to city by shadowy forces. In the end, there’s only one place left for them to go. And one chance to escape.

But as ancient secrets are uncovered, the next journey might just be a trip too far.

Review:

So… There was a plan to review this for SFF Insiders solely due to getting a physical copy after the novel itself had a wrong stop on its way to Glasgow. But that was while I was signing up for the SPSFC judge panel. A few weeks later, I got to look at the list of novels that we have to read for this competition, and Rex Burke's novel, “The Wrong Stop” was on our, the SFF Insider team, spreadsheet. My mind immediately went to the thought of killing two birds with one stone. The first bird would be a review for this novel, fair and critical of both the highlights and the more “ehhh” moments of “The Wrong Stop”, and the other bird would be the first of five or six novels that I’d end up reviewing for SPSFC. Now, I was going to read and review this novel while on a train to Berlin… but my US and UK trip happened, classes have begun again, and that idea was scrapped. Instead, I read it from the comfort of my own room.

To start this off, had I need of selling this book to a random stranger, and that would be you, I’d hand them this blurb:

“Hutch is a student of England wanting to tour Europe with his two friends. That is, until they get on a train to Berlin, and things go awry. Care for more?”

However, that is probably not enough to sell the book, let alone garner enough explanation to continue with the purchasing or reading of the novel. So, I hope that this review helps shed some light on why you should read this book. Hopefully.

To start things off… let's take a look at Hutch, Sully and Jed. Hutch, our main character, is just a normal college student on a trip around Europe with his two friends, Sully, and Jed. Sully just wants to explore the mainland's wide variety of drinks, caring little for actual sightseeing. And Jed? Jed got dragged out of his conspiracy headquarters (his room) by Hutch and Sully for a third person as to fit in a bit as tourists. And oh boy, do the three of them have a journey. Shenanigans ensue, stops are made, drinks are drunk, and the unnamed alien is doing what an alien does when on earth… try to fit in.

From there, there’s the plot. While simplistic and somewhat easy to guess where things are going if all the puzzle pieces are put together midway through the novel, it still works in terms of being a fun read. There’s some twists and turns, but aside from them, it’s rather straightforward and to the point. Except for one part of the whole thing. There’s chapters that are just redacted dialogue and ramblings of a secret service entity. It does follow the main plot line, but I still am not sure what the end result of that was supposed to be, besides the usage of letting us know what the intelligence service knew. Maybe it’ll be a bit more clear as to its purpose in the next book. Fun spin on the chase though.

The next part concerns world building. A few things are made up, but the majority of the world is just Europe, its various train station hubs, and Britain. The things that are made up is the secret service dedicated for searching for aliens, a thingamabob that is critical to the story, and the alien itself. Now, I could go the Jed route and say that it’s all true, and claim that aliens do exist somewhere (probably, who knows what’s on some moons in this solar system), but I doubt such things do exist. Is it done well? Yes. And the alien tech that is used? Far superior to what we humans use.

And that brings me to the surreal experience of reading the novel in the middle of Europe. Each location in this book exists, and I’ve been to most of them. I’ve also gotten to experience the train service of a few nations (subway systems count too). Reading this, I couldn’t help but chuckle whenever the DB showed up, due to their reputation of being late, and often unreliable to get somewhere punctually. Personally, they’re reasonably on time, but it does depend on where you are in Germany. It could be amazing in one state, complete chaos in the next.  Besides that, each location felt like it was brought to life accordingly, and I could perfectly visualise a few of these places due to having been in the main train station for more than 10 minutes, so it was a nice blend of reality with fiction. 

There is one gripe I have about the novel - that government secret service dialogue. It’s nice to have it in the novel, but for the first half of the book, I had no clue what was going on with that. However, it did clear up and make a bit more sense later on and I kinda got where it was going. Now, that is my own opinion, and you’d have to read the novel yourself to get a sense of what you think about it.

If you like train shenanigans, aliens, secret services chasing said aliens, and lots of misunderstandings, “The Wrong Stop” is for you.

As always, thank you for reading this review, and I hope I’ve helped nudge you towards your next read. This is part of the many reviews I’ll be churning out for the SPSFC competition, and as of writing this review, all bets are off where I’ll stand by the time I’ve finished writing the last review, since up till now, this is the only one I’ve read (10.02.2024). Depending on when this review is out however, I’ll probably have read most of what I do have to read, and by that time, I’ll probably have a more concrete plan on where I stand on each book. If this novel doesn’t intrigue you as much, don’t fret, here’s a random link to a SFF Insiders post, it could be to a book in any category of fiction. Carpe diem, seize the day! 

Wherever you are reading this, good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight, see y’all next time with whatever book I’ll be reviewing next.