I am not surprised. 2/3 of books about Alien are mediocre. Especially when we talks about interesting ideas and exploring. We are just baited by this, and then the story go to stereotypical rails: survival, action, running (hello, Out of the Shadows).
This is why I like 80-90-00s Alien books - they were mad, fantastic, fantastic mad, but really exciting. And the authors really love to explore ideas, no matter how funny they were.