Key Lime Sky is a 2024 sci-fi novel by Ali Hess. It follows Denver Bryant, an autistic, nonbinary pie aficionado who lives in the small town of Muddy Gap, Wyoming. Denver states in the book that they use any pronouns, so I’m going to switch pronouns when talking about xem, hopefully that won’t be too confusing. One day, when driving home from a roadside diner, he sees a UFO explode over the town. When questioning their neighbors, it seems that they’re the only one to have noticed anything, and what’s more, they’re the only one who seems to notice or care about the residents strange behavior, and the numerous odd occurrences popping up around town. Frustrated, he chronicles the whole thing on his blog, which skyrockets its popularity and the readers urge xem to keep digging. Along the way he meets Ezra, a handsome bartender who is the only one to take their claims seriously. As the two start to investigate, and start a romance, alien activity seems to ramp up. People are disappearing, the environment itself changes, and when Denver and Ezra try to leave, they find that they can’t. As two of the few survivors left in town, Denver and Ezra have to find the extraterrestrial source and kill it before it not only swallows up the town, but the entire world.
So, I had a couple disadvantages when reading this novel. One is that I’m not much of a sci-fi person. I’m not completely new to the genre, I’ve read a few sci-fi novels in the past, though all of them are what people would call “soft sci-fi” as opposed to “hard sci-fi”. I’ve watched all of the Star Wars movies at least once, though I have not seen an episode of any Star Trek Series. So I’m not exactly an expert nor an enthusiast of the genre. For that reason, whenever the book starts talking about, for example, how exactly the alien got there via interdimensional travel, or how the alien was terraforming the earth to make it more hospitable for them, my eyes kinda glazed over, preferring to focus more on the parts about Denver’s character arc, or they and Ezra’s relationship. But to the book’s credit, there’s not a ton of that in there, and I do think it’s explained in a way that the reader can grasp, since, as Denver says, xe is not a scientist, and the explanation is basically what they could piece together, so it’s more in layman’s terms. But if you like that kind of more hard science-y explanations for things like aliens and interdimensional travel in your sci-fi books, you will definitely find some of that here.
The book is kind of a slow burn at first. It starts out with Denver and Ezra trying to figure out what’s going on with the explosion and some of the strange things that are popping up around town, like unexplained seashells showing up even though they’re in Wyoming, and they don’t look like any kind of seashells they’ve ever seen. And for some reason they won’t show up on camera whenever they try to take a picture of them. Then it slowly escalates from seashells, to sand, to residents acting odd, to them disappearing altogether. Then the weirdness starts to really ramp up with them being unable to leave Muddy Gap, then buildings start to transform, changing where the walls go, being cut in half, floating, then eventually disappearing all together. And, as the title suggests, the sky does eventually turn green. Just how strange the town gets as the alien activity increases is a lot of fun and really ups the stakes for our main characters, so they can figure out how to stop this thing before the whole world ends up like this. And how all of these odd occurances fit together makes for a fun mystery to try and figure out. (Though, like I said earlier, I didn’t quite understand all of the explanations. But I at least understood the basics. Enough to follow just what exactly was going on.)
` Another disadvantage I had while reading is that I am not nonbinary, nor any kind of trangender person, so I can’t speak to how accurately the trans experience was portrayed in the novel. I do like that the author gave them many character traits besides just being nonbinary, like their obsession with pie, their childhood interest in aliens and UFO’s, and his collection of tropical fish. In fact, I would say that the book focuses more on his autism and how that makes them an outsider to their town as opposed to being nonbinary. I do think that anyone who struggles with feeling like an outsider can relate to Denver to some degree, though I also think the reader should have some understanding of autism and autistic people in order to understand why Denver sometimes acts the way they do. Like, for example, his bluntness. Denver can be very blunt and honest with people sometimes in a way that hurts their feelings, though they never mean to. This is common with autistic people, who often don’t understand social cues or when something is inappropriate to bring up. But this also highlights another characteristic of Denver’s which is that xe wants to help people, and often can’t hold their comments back because they genuinely are trying to help by making them, it’s just that other people find them rude and condescending. It’s why they end up getting roped into the whole alien conflict and trying to save the town, even though they were considered an outcast by said town.
A major theme for the novel is community. About finding community and recognizing the community that you didn’t know you had. Throughout the alien apocalypse, Denver meets Ezra, his true love, and Tasha, another trans person, and xe wonders if they ever would have met them if not for the whole alien stuff going on. They also come to realize that they had a community all along, they just didn’t realize it. Denver is somewhat estranged from their family at the beginning of the novel, even though he does love them. They were raised by their aunt and uncle after their mother decided she didn’t want to deal with them anymore (The constant drinking certainly didn’t help matters either.) So they feel like an outsider even amongst family, especially when comparing himself to his cousins. But xe freaks out when realizing that the alien invasion means that xe might not see xir family ever again, and ends up missing them deeply. They also start to remember more of the kindnesses some people in the town showed them after everyone is gone. Like the couple who let him pet their dog, or the guy who does his grocery orders putting in some extra stuff for him. They start to realize that they let people’s negative opinions of them and negative interactions with them mean more than the positive ones, to the point that most of the positive ones go forgotten until they are gone, and realize that just because the haters are louder, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re right. That xe shouldn’t base their self worth on what some bigots think, and that they have more people in their corner than they thought.
I also adore Denver and Ezra’s relationship. Ezra seems to take on the role of the caretaker or the protector in their relationship, as he helps Denver calm down when their having panic attacks, cuddles them after they wake up with nightmares about the alien, and make them open up to him in ways that they never had with anyone else before. Like Denver says in the novel, “having someone who was safe, who didn’t judge me for being myself, was the sexiest thing I could think of.” And honestly? Same. The care goes both ways too. Denver is one of the only people in town who doesn’t judge Ezra for his somewhat shady past, or for his weight, or his job. They both give each other space to be themselves without being judged, and I think that’s beautiful.
So, despite my lack of sci-fi knowledge, I found myself really enjoying this book. I liked the main character, I liked the themes of finding community and allies in unlikely places, of not letting other people’s negative opinions of you shape how you see yourself. And I really liked the romance between our two leads. I also enjoyed the mystery of what exactly was going on in Muddy Gap, and what this alien’s ultimate goal was. If you’re a sci-fi fan, I’d encourage you to check it out. Even if you’re not, I’d encourage you to check it out anyways. You might find yourself enjoying it more than you thought.
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