| Title | : | Alien: River of Pain (Canonical Alien trilogy, #3) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1781162727 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781781162729 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 |
| Publication | : | First published November 25, 2014 |
Protected by the Colonial Marines, the colonists seek to terraform the storm-swept planet. Two such residents are Anne and Russell Jorden, seeking a fortune that eluded them on Earth. On Acheron, Anne gives birth to the colony’s first newborn. Rebecca Jordan, also known as Newt.
The wildcatters discover a vast, decaying spaceship. The horseshoe-shaped vessel is of particular interest to Weyland-Yutani, and may be the answer to their dreams. But what Anne and Russ find on board proves to be the stuff, not of dreams, but of nightmares.
Alien TM & © 1979, 2013 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Alien: River of Pain (Canonical Alien trilogy, #3) Reviews
-
I loved the first book in this trilogy, the second one though was trash and this third book is also pretty poor; it's a shame because it started off alright.
It's a prequel to the brilliant second movie "Aliens" but the characters are poorly developed in this book and I don't think this one adds a single thing to the franchise.
The story itself is not well written, it's shallow and has zero sense of suspense, fear or horror.
I recommend to "Alien" completionists only. -
Let's be real. Novels based on movie franchises (or tv, for that matter,) often feel like a nostalgia trip if not an outright money grab.
So, you like the movie Aliens? The Cameron one? Well, good news! This one adds a lot to the original movie, adding a lot of backstory for the original colonists on Archeron where we get to see Newt and her parents and the ultimate destruction of the colony.
We also get Ripley and a bit more of her story on Earth before all the S**t went down.
Here's the real:
I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
I don't care. I love it. It's like watching an extended version of the film, only a bit MORE extended, with only a few bits here and there from the original re-done in the novel and leaving me wide open to watch the movie all over again with more appreciation.
Guess what DVD I just popped in my player? :) Yippie!!! -
Alien:River of Pain takes place right before Ripley is found floating in an old ship in space with her cat in a cryogenic unit. It is also before Newt is even born that the story starts. It is the story of the settlers, scientists, and marines that were there at the time. We know from the movie Newt is the only survivor, well, this is that story.
Narration was a full cast and pieces from the movie. Excellent! -
You know a three book series is a little light on for ideas when one has to skip forward hundreds of years and deal with a descendent of the first book's main character, only for the third book to zap back into the past to tell a tale only peripherally related to that same main character. Such is the major flaw with this final novel in the newest ALIEN trilogy sanctioned and promoted as canon by the good executives at 20th Century Fox.
Christoper Golden is this time handed writing duties for Alien: River of Pain and its very obvious why. The man is a wordsmith who can construct a hell of a paragraph. But he can only work with what he is given; or, if you prefer, it doesn't matter how much you polish a turd ...
Golden takes the reader back to tell the story of how Newt's family and the rest of the colony at Hadley's Hope, situated on a nasty piece of rock called LV-426 or Acheron (which translates to the titular "River of Pain"), are taken over by the alien infestation Ripley, Hicks, Bishop and co eventually run into during the events of the movie, Aliens.
As you might guess, there isn't a lot of narrative to work with here. Colonists find the derelict space jockey ship, disturb the eggs, get face-huggered, aliens emerge, death and destruction reign supreme. So Golden does his best to flesh this out by giving us more detail about Newt's family (which is fine), shoe-horning in a bunch of colonial marines (which seems odd) and detailing pointless other characters who seem to exist purely to add an extra 100 pages to the novel. Worse, for some reason somebody decided re-creating scenes from the first two films in the series would serve some kind of purpose here. It doesn't. It's just annoying and a waste of time .
It takes more than half the novel before the aliens finally appear, and then everything seems to go into fast-forward mode. Scenes that should have been tense are over in less than a page; characters who were moderately sketched in die with nary a whimper; while others who were barely mentioned last far, far longer. It all seems random and badly planned. Only Newt's mother, Anne, and the new CO for the marines, Captain Brackett, seem to have any kind of arc. The rest are just alien fodder so it's hard to care one whit when they commence dying like flies.
As a huge fan of the Aliens universe, Alien: River of Pain was a major disappointment and by far the worst novel in the series. Had it been the first, not even Golden's pretty way with words would have prompted me to return for the subsequent tales. I guess I should be thankful then, that like a crappy dessert wine, it was saved until last.
2 Face-Fulls of Alien Vomit for Alien: River of Pain. -
This was a free Audible Original and right up my alley, so I hopped on it.
I especially liked the last one I listened to
Alien: Out of the Shadows by Tim Lebbon, so I thought I would enjoy this one just as much. I didn't.
I felt that during the first half, not much happened, other than us meeting everyone, which seemed like a bit of a waste, since
Also, when the action finally started, it was a bit difficult to fathom what was going on-I mean you could figure it out- but it seemed silly to go through all of these performances, screaming and sound effects, only to have to figure out what happened by the actual dialogue before and after the event.
Overall though, this was a free audio and I was entertained- I just didn't get anything new.
Thanks to Audible for the free download. -
Oh... My... Gods... PERFECT!
I'm sitting here for 10 minutes now not knowing how to start this review. This book was a rollercoaster of emotions.
At first I didn't even want to try it, as ignore is my default reaction when ad bombardment starts. Audible aggresively promoted the book everywhere and it was very hard to ignore. Which was pissing me off.
But as somewhat of a fan of this universe, it would have been irresponsible of me not to give it a fair try. At least that's my rationalization for succumbing to a mass-media pressure. It's a pretty good defense :-)
Third part in the
Canonical Alien Trilogy series (which I had no idea about!) and written back in 2014 (which I had no idea about even more!). Some fan I am, right?
Book #1 was turned into an audiobook on 26th of April 2016. And on 26/04/2017 they recorded this one. Huh?
I guess on 26/04/2018 we'll have our second part :-)
So I cared not about the order of things and jumped right into the book #3. And I had a blast!
Acted, not narrated, by the full cast of ~20 people, it was masterfully directed and edited. It was like being there!
Story-wise, it could have been better, but I was enjoying being immersed in it too much to care about kinks here and there. I might have just missed Aliens too much. Or just the general horror genre, not entirely sure.
I see plenty of reviews hitting the book with 2-3*, but I guess they haven't had the audiobook experience I did. It made everything so much better. So, so much better.
Can't see myself rating this less than 5*, considering how much enjoyment I got out of it. I'm still not clear on the previous story of this trilogy - or post-story, since this part is supposed to be a kind of a flashback to previous part... or a clarification, tying loose ends, short story thing - I don't know. Nor do I care.
It plays perfectly as an introduction to the movie Aliens 2, the best sequel of any awesome movie ever. No spoilers! :-)
It was a bit short, though. Not even full 5 hours. But any book that could thrill me like this and run through a vertigo of emotions fully deserves my credit. I'll surely be getting part 1, but I may wait until they record part 2, too.
Grab it from Audible [
US/
UK] for 15-ish bucks.
They are here... And we're all going to die. -
Not quite as good as the last Alien dramatisation by Audible,
Alien: Out of the Shadows: An Audible Original Drama, which I loved. This is set just before the arrival of marines in Aliens and while there's a certain delicious tingle you get as a listener knowing everyone is going to die save one little Newt, none of the characters were vivid enough for me to really enjoy their horrible deaths. Not only that, nobody stared dying until at least half way through. Come on producers, all we really want is lots of aliens killing lots of people in imaginative and painful ways. And Ripley being her usual kid ass self. Of course, this had the best soundtrack- the fun noises of aliens, spaceships, loaders, face hugers...
Who am I kidding anyway, i'll be listening to and watching these Aliens things till the end of time, even though the franchise is getting closer to destruction than ever. -
5/10
The previous audiobook was fun and had me wanting to listen more and more. This one forgot the fun element and was a bit of a bore. It's a lot of scene setting for an end result of lots of machine gun noises and people you don't care about dying.
The production was top notch, can't fault that. The story was boring. I doubt I'll listen to any more unless they pop up as a freebie. -
This book is ridiculous.
I'm a sucker for happy endings and always want the best for all the characters. So it's not a good sign when I read something and hope for everyone to die at the end. The team was just so stupid, I was rooting for the Aliens the whole time (who were a lot more intelligent and better organized by the way).
The humans made so many dumb decisions. They kept saying things like "For crying out loud, it's some kind of snake, not the boogeyman" even after five Aliens were on the loose and people have been killed. They also constantly wandered off alone, even though team members went missing and kept forgetting to lock doors behind them ("I didn‘t think it mattered!").
Another problem for me was the big cast. So many characters with so little personal information, therefore I didn't really care for any of them. Although Anna Friel did a good job as Anne, I still think that Laurel Lefkow as Ripley works a lot better as the lead. For me Ripley will always be the most interesting character in the Alien Universe, but she was hardly in this book.
And the kid voice actors were really annoying, especially Tim with his habit to perform his lines as if he where in a stage production and not in an audio book. He kept emphasizing every other word in his lines while the rest of the cast spoke in a rather normal, more realistic manner and it annoyed me to death.
This book is not as thrilling and fast-paced as the prequel, it actually takes until 50% of the book to get exciting, when finally the Aliens show up. And even then it's not exactly thrilling. It's still a lot better than Prometheus and Alien: Covenant though. At least the idiots in Alien: River of Pain put on helmets before going out and exploring unknown territory. -
This full cast audible drama was amazing! 5 stars for the audible and 3 stars for the overall story.
We do learn some interesting things such as why Burke went along with the marines and all about Newts family.
The voice actors were a good match to known characters and the MC marine sounded just like Ron Perlman. But no one can scream like Newt.
Solid read to celebrate Alien Day. -
Wie diese Hörspiele in den offiziellen Canon integriert sind, gefällt mir bedeutend besser als die filmischen Neuaufgüsse der letzten Jahre.
Durch die Originalsounds aus dem Archiv und, soweit es möglich war, den Originalsprechern ist es ein gutes Hörerlebnis. Natürlich weiß man, wie die Geschichte ausgeht, wenn man Aliens gesehen hat.
Trotzdem finde ich die Story ganz gut. Wenn man bedenkt, dass es vorm 2. Alien Film eine ganze Kolonie bis auf Newt auf LV426 bzw. Acheron dahingerafft hat, hat mich schon immer interessiert, was sich da zugetragen haben soll. Klar, jeder Alien Film und auch bisher jedes Hörbuch läuft in dem Universum nach dem selben Schema F ab. Damit muss man wohl leben. Aber da es auch offizieller Canon ist, kann man so kleine Sachen, die man bisher nicht wusste für bare Münze nehmen.
Zum Beispiel die Erwähnung von Bishop und warum er nicht so ein Arsch ist, wie Ash.
Alles in allem eine runde Sache. -
I can't get enough of Alien and Ripley. Movies or audiobooks. The Xenomorph is so terribly awesome.
-
This is another good listen from Audible. This is the third in the series and my only real complaint is that they are not in chronological order.
This book is set near the beginning of the Alien franchise and slots in well between the first two films. Ripley is on board a ship having been found after the events with the original Aliens aboard the Nostromo. We also have a separate point of view being on the planet where the original aliens were found (LV-426) and where Newt now lives with her family. This is the story of what happens before Ripley turns up and finds Newt herself.
The characters were good, they had some depth to them and the plot was solid. It takes a little while to get to the Alien action but when we do it is well told and described and I could picture it well.
This one was good but perhaps a little too slow for me. I wanted more bloody mayhem sooner.
A good read 3.5/5 but I’m rounding up because I did enjoy it. 4/5 -
Aliens is one of my top 5 all time favourite movies, and I always wanted to know the back story of Hadley's hope and this novel delivered that. However a very lacklustre ending spoiled what was a pretty decent attempt at a alien novel. The pace really picked up halfway though but just fell kind of flat....shame.
-
This is an Audible exclusive radio drama, with a full cast, sound effects and music. A bit different to your average audio book, and for me the quality of the voice acting and production were outstanding. I got totally immersed in the story even though I pretty much knew where it was going. (It's an Alien story and they all pretty much have the same pattern.)
The drama fills in a part of the story not covered in the movies. It's about the fate of the colony on LV-426, then know as Acheron. The story starts some ten years after the initial colonization of the planet and before they discovered anything unusual on the planet. They find the alien spaceship and what happens next is pretty much what you would expect:) It ends right at the point where the young girl Newt is discovered by Ripley (near the beginning of the movie Aliens).
Excellent production and entertainment, not quite 5 stars because of predictability. -
While the previous two novels in this new Alien series have been good this one is excellently done. Whilst not 100% new like the others this expands upon and fills in many gaps about what happened on LV426 prior to Aliens.The characters are good, the action gripping and well written and the story is very good despite knowing how it eventually turns out.For any fans of the books or the films this would definitely be recommended, its like Aliens : Special Editions - The prequel. -
I'll leave my review of the story to my read of the actual book, this is purely looking at the Audible drama version.
It was fun.
The acting generally was good with nothing detracting from the action and story except for Newts scream. Seriously this was just bad.
The sound effects and dialogue was fitting to the story and authentic to the series and it was an enjoyable romp as it dipped in and out of the films scenes. What was Dr Bashir doing in it though? I know he's an actor doing other stuff but I cant hear his voice and not think of Bashir.
Looking forward to Sea of Sorrows Audible drama now. -
Interesting, but ultimately, I was not all the curious about what happened in the few minutes before the movie takes place. Just check the deleted scenes.
-
Entertaining and kinda heartbreaking.
-
River of Pain is the sort of a prequel to Aliens taking place on Hadley's Hope (the story takes place during the whole, Newts parents find the Alien eggs and before Ripley arrives with the Marines).
Aliens being easily one of(if not the best) Sci Fi horror film of all time I was looking forward to this to fill in some of the events that happened and what the residents of Hadleys Hope went through before Ripley turned up. Obviously if you have seen Aliens you know what happens so its not going to be pretty.
It does take a while to get going as they do introduce new characters to add more substance to the story but as soon as it kicks off it does so big time. There are a few questionable choices though such as the Weyland Yutani science offers some of the things they do seem silly and the lead Marine was very generic. Unfortunately strong characters is something that this book significantly lacks and none of them were particularly memorable, there really is no Ripley type character(although you do get intermissions with her in recovery at the space station after she was found in stasis) and this could have done with a Hicks character as none of the marines had any personality to them.
Although this was good for a fan and did do a decent job at making me think back to scenes in Aliens it just lacking to make it something great, this might be again that I watched Aliens so many times I lost count so am fully aware of the story and that meant there was no real shock factor already knowing the outcome but it was just lacking a great plot and did come across as a tie-in for a film that was out for decades before this book was written.
Hadley's Hope is for me my favorite Sci-Fi Horror setting and to me the idea of tying together what happened between Newts Dad getting hugged and Ripleys arrival should really be made into a film and this story to me dosent live up to the potential of the source material at the disposal. But it might also have been that I did have too many expectations for this being a huge Aliens nerd and really enjoying Out of the Shadows. -
I really enjoyed Alien: Out of the Shadows. So much in fact that I bought the next two in the series,including this one. While I realize that I am "reading" them out of publication order, I opted for chronological order. I doubt that changed my opinion.
This installment was really nothing more than a set up or prequel for the second in the Alien movie series although Mr. Golden tried very hard to make this a compelling story despite the fact that we already know the outcome if we saw Aliens.
As a "reader's theater" type audio performance I found myself lost many times listening to a lot of noise, screaming, and sound effects with little or no idea what was going on. Another reviewer described it as listening to a movie with the picture off and that hits it right on the head. I needed to see what was going on to understand the action. I didn't have this problem with Out of the Shadows.
Production quality was high and I still had fun so I gave it 3 stars. Maybe 2 1/2. -
Originally published at SFFWorld.
Alien: River of Pain by Christopher Golden is the final novel in the new Alien trilogy release last year by Titan Books. The first two books, Alien: Out of the Shadows and Alien: Sea of Sorrows, focused on the planet LV-178 and told two semi-connected stories set a couple of hundred year apart. Alien: River of Pain, meanwhile, returns us to very familiar surroundings: LV-426. Acheron. Hadley’s Hope.
From the publisher:
Concluding the all-new, official trilogy set in the Alien Universe!
A new adventure featuring the Colonial Marines and leading directly into the second movie, Aliens.
The massively acclaimed Alien franchise is one of the most successful of all time, beginning with the first film in 1979. When Ellen Ripley finally returned to Earth, she learned that the planet LV-426–the planet from Alien–has been colonized. This novel will reveal for the first time the fate of the colonists, of the Colonial Marines who accompanied them, and how there came to be one survivor: the girl known as Newt.
Alien: River of Pain sits firmly between the first two Alien films, with the majority of the story set in Hadley’s Hope on Acheron, the planet we know as LV-426. Early passages in the novel are simply scenes from the films (one from Alien, more from Aliens) in order to set the scene of the events Ripley went through during Alien and the effects the aftermath of those events had on her. From there we alternate with scenes from Hadley’s Hope in its early days, to the events during the early part of Aliens where Ripley is on the space station orbiting Earth. After this scene-setting, and Carter Burke’s message to the colony to investigate the coordinates the Nostromo landed at, we switch entirely to Acheron, finding out just what happened to Hadley’s Hope before the arrival of the Sulaco in Aliens.
I’m a big Alien fan. I love the films, with Aliens being my favourite of them all (and in my top 3 movies of all time), so being able to read the story of Hadley’s Hope appealed massively to me. I’m not sure what newcomers will think, but there is enough background given in the early parts of the novel to bring them up to speed enough to immerse in the story. For those that have seen the films it’s a great premise, but one that doesn’t entirely work, unfortunately.
Firstly, what does work is the way Golden tells the story, building characters and examining the psyche of both Ripley and those on Acheron, particularly the Jordan family – Anne, Russ, Time and Newt – and Demian Brackett, the new CO for the marine detachment based in Hadley’s Hope. We see more of the alien ship as Anne and Russ investigate it prior to his facehugger attachment, and also the way that this is dealt with by both those in the employ of Weyland-Yutani, and of Brackett and the marines.
Characters are a clear strength throughout the novel, with Golden particularly gifted at examining the issues being part of a frontier colony has, as well as the psychological effects it has on its inhabitants. Other, more interpersonal, relationships also work very well, with the history between Anne Jordan and Demian Brackett adding another layer to the events as they unfold.
Golden also balances the build-up and pay-off well, with roughly the first half of the novel giving depth to both characters and setting before the shit hits the fan. When it goes wrong, it really goes wrong, and there was no point I didn’t feel that the xenomorphs weren’t truly dangerous and deadly.
However, not all runs smoothly in Alien: River of Pain. The biggest issue I had with the novel was the inclusion of the marine detachment in Hadley’s Hope. Within the context of the story it does work, but when looked at as a prequel to Aliens, it just doesn’t. Including something that was never mentioned, or even hinted at, during that film really grated on me, and I’ve found it very difficult to get past this glaring issue. There are also other, smaller aspects that, as a fan of the director’s cut of Aliens, stood out like a sore thumb. Events portrayed in that cut of the film were changed slightly on the page and, while this shouldn’t be much of a problem, I came away annoyed that they weren’t addressed and amended to reflect what was seen on screen. This isn’t a completely brand-new story, and as such those parts that were recycled from the film should have been kept as they were.
There is also the issue of how the scientists deal with the emergence of the chestbusters. It’s a given that they first time it happens and the xenomorph swiftly runs into the ducts would come as a surprise, but once they know what to expect restrictions and controls should be put in place, but they weren’t. It’s a shame that small points like this take away from what could have been a solid story.
Taken at face value, Alien: River of Pain is the best novel out of the new trilogy. The story of Hadley’s Hope and its inhabitants is strong and gripping, but minor issues that could of (and should of) been addressed take away from this strength. However, the major issue of marines present in the colony is one that I simply can’t ignore or overlook, and it’s a damned shame. Despite this I’d recommend the novel to Alien fans and newcomers alike, perhaps others can look past the issues that I had. -
An Aliens-story set on LV-426 just before Ripley and her company of merry marines arrive in Aliens.
We are introduced to the everyday activities of the colonists especially the Jordens, Newts family, and of the discovery of the xenomorphs which leads to the fall of the colony.
It's not a good novel.
So, don't I have anything good to say about this novel? Oh, yes I have. The author has a very good way with words. The setting is brilliantly described and it's easy to imagine the places, the people and the horror. Even though I can't bother to care for most of the characters I'm still hooked as their defences are falling apart and people begin to disappear, so it's not all negatives that it took half the novel to introduce the setting and characters. I'm also glad to finally read a novel where the danger of the xenomorphs acidic blood isn't understated and where the incubation time of the chestburster fit with the films!
All in all though this is the weakest of the trilogy. It doesn't fit with the other novels. There are far too many mistakes in it. The story of Newt has already been told in
Aliens: Newt's Tale. It, among with the other three novels, retcons far too much established material.
I wouldn't recommend it to a die hard Alien-fan. They would probably be too upset, like me :) -
great prequel to aliens. liked that character and world building. now I want to watch aliens again!
-
Another solid production and story in the Canonical Alien trilogy. This one starts out with the birth of my favorite, Newt, and gives us a look at the planet LV-426—now called Acheron—which has been colonized. Aliens is my favorite movie in the entire franchise so I love anything related to it. This one is close to my heart in the trilogy as it brings me Newt again, and it's pretty nihilistic since you definitely know how it's going to end. I need more!
-
Seguimos con las dramatizaciones de estas novelas que se ubican entre las películas de la saga de Alien, En este caso Alien, Río de dolor se encuentra a caballo entre la primera y la segunda película. Parte de la novela se ve en los primeros minutos de la película, y la segunda película luego ya transcurre cuando el libro termina.
De nuevo el cast de actrices y actores es espectacular, y este libro me ha gustado mucho más. Se ambienta en Aqueronte, un planetoide al que estan intentando terraformar para que la vida tal como la conocemos sea posible en esa roca.
En este libro por supuesto aparecerán los aliens, no os sintáis defraudados, pero también se ve mucho el funcionamiento de esa colonia de humanos aventureros que decidieron dejar sus vidas en la Tierra para colonizar otros lugares. -
You know, I think I admire the aliens more than I admire the humans in this one - the humans made poor decision after poor decision.
I didn't realize until after reading that this was the setup for the Alien 2 movie - I kind of feel like I should go watch that again, since it has been forever.
Anyway - this was total brain candy, but I was entertained. A couple books I've read this week could have used the addition of some aliens - they might have cut down on the endless angst.
Go Aliens! -
I really enjoyed the first audio dramatisation of this trilogy Out of Shadows and this follow up was quite lackluster.
Pretty much nothing happens for the first half and then its just characters going through the motions until they're all dead. -
These Audible studio productions of the Alien stories are total brain candy - really high-quality productions. I marvel, too, at how they found voice actors who sound so similar to the film actors - particularly the voice actress in the part of Ripley, who sounds so much like Sigourney Weaver that it's a bit creepy. The plot to this one involves giving the colony backstory to show what happens in the Aliens film right before Ripley and the marines arrive (second movie). You might think none of the colonists but Newt survive, but ha - not so!
For optimal atmospherics, best listened to in the dark - preferably a dark sewer tunnel. -
Oh boy. A half-hearted retelling/sidestory of an event that was partially covered in an underwhelming comic series from the 90s, with a paperback cover repurposed from the most critically-panned tie-in game in the franchise (Aliens: Colonial Marines) and a plot that turns minor characters into ultra-badasses and reframes the entire infestation of Hadley's Hope as some weird "race against time" story. What could go wrong?
In a word, nearly everything.
Did you ever want to know how Lv-426 was terraformed in the first place? Maybe you wanted to know that Newt Jorden was such a special snowflake that the entire population cheered when she was born. Or maybe you wanted to know about the heretofore-unmentioned squad of Colonial Marines that just randomly happened to be stationed at Hadley's Hope when the xenomorphs began appearing, and that their commander is an ultra-awesome soldier who's the very personification of "I'm doing what's right"?
If you answered "no" to any of these questions, you probably have good taste and thus should skip reading this book, because it doesn't get much better from here.
It wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world to do a pseudo-retelling of Aliens: Newt's Tale, the underwhelming and maligned adaptation of Aliens that came out in 1992 and focused on the leadup to the infestation and kidnapping of the colonists in Hadley's Hope. The only thing this book (the third and final in the much-criticized "Out of the Shadows" trilogy) has going for it is that it actually goes a bit more indepth into the horror aspects of the xenomorphs, as there are multiple scenes of colonists being kidnapped and the Marines fighting them - all with disastrous results.
Just like the first book, this story is a foregone conclusion. Since Newt is the only survivor, there's isn't really any tension in trying to figure out if anyone survives or not, though at least there's a small curveball there with the group that escapes at the end. The attempts to reframe the massacre of the colonists as some sort of weird bittersweet/heroic ending (Brackett is so guilty over not saving Newt that he rescues a girl just like her, and the colonists have a magic escape shuttle they can use to escape the colony!) is really off-putting. When you're forced to crib ideas even James Cameron found too ridiculous -- namely, the concept of Ripley and the others using a magic escape shuttle to escape the colony in early drafts of Aliens -- you know you've hit rock-bottom.
The writing is technically proficient, and there's a few nice nods to the film itself, but most of the material comes off as pointless fanservice at best and plodding monotony at worst. Not helping the story is Captain Demian Brackett, the commander of the Marines who is so infallible and experienced that it honestly feels a bit boring reading about him. He has no flaws, everyone seems to love him and he continually survives situations. The whole concept of a Marine detachment stationed at Hadley's Hope is ridiculous in the first place.
All in all, the only people who should bother reading this are Aliens ultra-fans who just want a bit more history on part of the universe. It's a safe skip for everyone else.
But hey, at least it's not as bad as Sea of Sorrows!
