The Second Ship walks on hallowed sci-fi ground and goes where many stories have gone before, the rumored alien ship crash in 1948 in Roswell, New Mexico; but Richard Phillips does bring a unique twist to his version of the tale. That twist is that a second ship also crashed at the same time but remained undiscovered by the US government. Of course since this is a young adult (YA) novel that second ship is eventually found by 3 high school students that live in the area. They make their discovery at about the same time that the US government comes clean about the first ship that they have kept secret for so many years. These kids decide keep the discovery to themselves and use their secret alien technology to uncover the true motivation behind the President's bold promise to freely share advanced alien technology with the rest of the world.

This unique twist does allow for the telling of a much deeper and more complex story than I expected and it definitely kept me interested in finding out what was really going on. It eventually becomes clear that the second ship was in some sort of battle with the first ship, which caused them both to crash, and thus there is an alien mystery to solve from 1948 along with the present day one. The President definitely has a hidden agenda for suddenly being willing to share advanced alien technology with the rest of the world but what exactly is it? This is definitely a light sci-fi tale full of YA tropes but as long as you don't take it too seriously then you should be entertained.

That is true as long as you can overcome two fundamental problems. The first being that the character interactions just don't feel very realistic. A lack of realism may be an odd thing to call out regarding a sci-fi book but it isn't the science that feels unrealistic, it is the speech and mannerisms of the high school kids and their interactions with their parents, teachers, and the FBI/NSA. For the majority of the book I found myself drawn in by the story only to be pushed away by contrived dialogue between characters. Of course I am not a young adult so maybe I am just out of touch with such things but it impacted my immersion nonetheless. YMMV.

The second issue is one that it is easily solved by just being willing to read more than one book in the series as the first book just ends completely out of the blue without wrapping up the story in any reasonable way. You really need to be willing to go at least two books into the Rho Agenda trilogy or it is not worth starting at all. If you do decide to go at least that far then you will be rewarded with a second book that is much better than the first. After book two, Immune, you should know where you stand and whether or not you want to finish the series.

For audiobook fans, veteran Macleod Andrews does the narration and his excellent performance helps to overcome some of the challenges presented by the character interactions.