Pledge of Honor
By Lori L. Anderson (Lori Foerster)

      If you enjoyed the short-lived, well-acted, well-conceived but botched by the WB and UPN series “Roswell,” you’ll love Pledge of Honor, an alien-human Romeo and Juliet fable that avoids the TV series’ cheesy detours and storytelling flaws. Unlike “Roswell,” Pledge of Honor, successfully blends forbidden love and the quest to save an alien race complicated by the prohibited intermixing with Earthers. The result: a tale of tolerance, love and courage, intermingled with the bonds of a family estranged by one man’s quest to learn from aliens, in this case Earthers.

      Why does everyone hate Earth? Either al-Qa’eda has spread to the embattled planet Elos, with France and Germany gleefully sticking up their noses at Earth, or otherwise Earth as a whole is “the ugly American.” Possibly the Elosians caught this year’s Super Bowl as well as our steady junk diet of tabloid TV, or else it’s all those stereotypes of Bubba in the hayfield talking about little green men. Darn those Confederate redneck white trash…sorry, I was channeling Howard Dean. Perhaps the Elosians watched Howard Dean and said, “Beam me up, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life here.” Or they were just annoyed by the way “Roswell” ended.

      However, when the Elosians’ version of the Taliban, the Berloff, kidnap several Earthers to supplant their dwindling population, Locom, the Saddam-like Berloff leader, finds himself bested by Jamie MacGivens, an Earth girl who’s not easy and whose boyfriend slept with her best friend all because Jamie was spending a tad too much time caring for her sick mother. Fortunately, Tony Stone, a guy crazy in love with his pregnant wife and possessed of a Sydney Carton-type bravery, proves to Jamie that not all men are jerks…not all Earth-men, anyway. The ancient Elosian “The One” Dolan, who proves that only Nixon could go to China, and his future-king grandson Keenu (echoes of “The Matrix” and Keanu Reeves here?), join with the courageous, intelligent, selfless Jamie on an unforgettable adventure of the will, mind, and heart in a saga that successfully marries Octavia Butler with “Roswell.” Stay tuned for Book Two of the trilogy, Obligation.