Intruders

Title: Intruders
Author: Zhen Lyu
Publisher: XlibrisAU
ISBN: 978-1-5144-4408-5
Pages: 398
Genre: Fiction

Reviewed by: J.W. Bankston

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Whether you’re a fan of “creature features” or just enjoy scary fairy tales, everyone has a favorite story about giants. From Jack’s Beanstalk to the residents of Brobdingnag in “Gulliver’s Travels,” we are all familiar with these overpowering beings. In “Intruders,” Zhen Lyu’s dynamic fantasy novel, these mythical creatures are given modern twists.

Reading “Intruders,” I remembered my father’s collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs novels. Burroughs is best-known as the creator of Tarzan but my favorite stories were those set in other worlds –– worlds which often exist in proximity to our own. Like Burroughs’s novel “At The Earth’s Core,” the explorers of “Intruders” discover fantastic creatures previously unknown. Like some of the best fantasy stories, “Intruders” begins in ordinary circumstances. We are introduced to five friends in their 20s preparing for a hike. There is very little about their lives or their neighborhood to suggest what’s coming. Everything changes when they make an impulsive decision during their trek. They decide to enter a cave. Inside, they soon encounter a community of giants. Their initial terror subsides –– the giants are benevolent behemoths. The friends pass pleasant days in their company. They help their new friends gather food; one even works to translate the giant’s simple language. Yet when they explore the cave further, they encounter different races of giants. Some try to kill the interlopers, others turn them into the human equivalent of purse dogs. The author does a fine job describing the various giants and their day-to-day life.

As with many ensemble dramas, each of the five brings a unique skill to the mix. By working together they manage to escape the cave. Unfortunately, they discover that some of the giants have conducted expeditions of their own. Indeed, evidence suggests they may have been responsible for the death of one character’s parents nearly a decade before. Just as worrying, the giants are beginning to fight people, and they are winning.

From here the friends face difficult decisions. The military has been fighting a losing battle. No one seems to know as much about the giants as our intrepid explorers. If the friends collaborate with the military, the good giants may face the same fate as the bad ones. If they don’t help, the human race could be extinguished.

The novel’s title provides a nice bit of ambiguity. Who is the intruder? Are the intruders the people entering the cave or the giants entering our world? Perhaps both. Readers seeking symbolism will find plenty of hidden meanings within the author’s text. Those seeking an old-fashioned adventure story will be pleased as well. Lyu has crafted a novel that recalls the pulp fictions of Burroughs while offering the dilemmas and stresses of modern life.