Alien/Predator Novel Reviews

[Samhain13]

"Ripley's Space Adventures"

[Corporal Hicks]

Continuity or no continuity, the inclusion of Ripley retroactively going on another adventure feels contrived.

Indeed. However, like (another thread where I'm referring back to SM) SM has said in the past, Out of the Shadows is far better than it has right to be. Yeah, it's contrived and looking for the reset button is distracting but it's still a good read.

[SM]

Yep.  It really shouldn't have worked as well as it did.

Same with Isolation.  The premise of including Amanda was a recipe for disaster that was just the opposite.

[The Old One]

I can buy Isolation more for a number of reasons;
The beacon.
Amanda Ripley's mother disappeared in a specific area of space,
she basically stayed there until she found something; and she did.

It's believable that a child looking for their parent, a parent they know disappeared on Elm Street
might encounter the same monster if they went looking for them there.
It's not the same as the protagonist, or an ancestor or a descendant by chance encountering Freddy Krueger
in a completely separate place and time. That feels contrived.

[HuDaFuK]

However, like (another thread where I'm referring back to SM) SM has said in the past, Out of the Shadows is far better than it has right to be. Yeah, it's contrived and looking for the reset button is distracting but it's still a good read.

Oh yeah, it's a good read. The Ripley thing just never stopped annoying me though. It felt like there was a far better book waiting to breakout without shoehorning her into it.

[The Old One]

However, like (another thread where I'm referring back to SM) SM has said in the past, Out of the Shadows is far better than it has right to be. Yeah, it's contrived and looking for the reset button is distracting but it's still a good read.

Oh yeah, it's a good read. The Ripley thing just never stopped annoying me though.
It felt like there was a far better book waiting to breakout without shoehorning her into it.

This; Ripley's inclusion undermined the rest of the book.

[Still Collating...]

I also found it silly she had to be included in the book but I agree with SM and Hicks. A lot better than I expected at the time. Ripley didn't ruin the experience for me, I even enjoyed the way she was written. Literally the biggest problems with the book I have is the harpoon-gun and number of cryotubes. 

On the other hand, River of Pain really annoys me like no other entry. It has really good bits but the bad ones make the whole thing sour for me. The premise was just stupid even though the writer wrote some characters pretty well and I did like his take on the aliens. But the inclusion of marines (not the writers fault though), the contrived escape ship, over usage of scenes from Aliens, messing up the Derelict's layout, reusing Newt's Tale and other stuff really pulled me out of the story.

As far as retroactively adding to the lore, I do agree that Alien Isolation and Out of the Shadows are good examples, the best IMHO. 

[The Old One]

I don't agree with Out of the Shadows being included in that line up, but to each their own.

[Corporal Hicks]

On the other hand, River of Pain really annoys me like no other entry. It has really good bits but the bad ones make the whole thing sour for me. The premise was just stupid even though the writer wrote some characters pretty well and I did like his take on the aliens. But the inclusion of marines (not the writers fault though), the contrived escape ship, over usage of scenes from Aliens, messing up the Derelict's layout, reusing Newt's Tale and other stuff really pulled me out of the story.

If they'd have just made them Colonial Marshalls...The escape ship thing...was interesting. Kinda interesting callback to the original script for Aliens actually.

[HuDaFuK]

Yeah, I really wish that'd come out a few months later so they could've worked Isolation's Marshals into it.

But Collating's right. There was just too much in that book that killed it for me.

[SM]

I also found it silly she had to be included in the book but I agree with SM and Hicks. A lot better than I expected at the time. Ripley didn't ruin the experience for me, I even enjoyed the way she was written. Literally the biggest problems with the book I have is the harpoon-gun and number of cryotubes. 

On the other hand, River of Pain really annoys me like no other entry. It has really good bits but the bad ones make the whole thing sour for me. The premise was just stupid even though the writer wrote some characters pretty well and I did like his take on the aliens. But the inclusion of marines (not the writers fault though), the contrived escape ship, over usage of scenes from Aliens, messing up the Derelict's layout, reusing Newt's Tale and other stuff really pulled me out of the story.

As far as retroactively adding to the lore, I do agree that Alien Isolation and Out of the Shadows are good examples, the best IMHO.

RoP was the best of the bunch.  Also had the most continuity issues.  And missed opportunities.

[TheBATMAN]

I thought River of Pain was perfectly fine up until it started to imitate Newt's Tale. That's where it went downhill for me. They should also have replaced the Colonial Marines with the colonial marshals as a nice world-building tie in to Isolation.

I've been very impressed with the Titan line of novels so far though.

[Still Collating...]

Overall, I love what Titan are doing. I enjoyed all of their original Alien/Predator novels, mostly The Cold Forge as of now. The Alien anthology didn't really work for me, liked about half of the stories there, going through the Predator anthology now and loving it so far! The Rage War trilogy was something I could have never expected to see and I really enjoyed it. It had problems but it was so fun at the same time.

When I step back and look at the situation, Titan has been really trying new things with these novels and IMO it's working. The worrying situation regarding the future of the Alien/Predator films is really sad and it makes me feel better seeing the effort that's been given to the novels. I really appreciate that we're getting new stories in the lore that actually seem to be of quality.

I've come at a stage where I'm literally more excited about the entries in the expanded universe more than the actual upcoming movies.

[Wweyland]

They over-bloated the Hadleys Hope situation with River Of Pain, Fire & Stone and one of the Bug Hunt stories. River of Pain was my least favorite of the trilogy.

[Xiggz456]

Just read "Predator: Concrete Jungle" for the first time in novel form. Some differences from the comic include the Predator attacking an NYPD shooting range instead of the subway (I think this may have been to differentiate the subway scene from Predator 2 as the novel came out in '95 and the comic was out in '89). But it also added to the sense that the Predators were goading Schaefer by targeting his friends and enemies. Also in the comic Schaefer defeats the Predator in the jungle by smashing a salt shaker in its eye and pushing it off a cliff; in the book Schaefer goes to rip it's mask off, which makes the Predator re-adjust his mask allowing Schaefer to push the pred off the cliff. Also a lot more reference to Dutch (he pretty much tells Schaefer exactly what went down in Central America). As for Nathan Archer's writing... it was kind of weird. For example instead of a new spaced paragraph to start a new scene he would write "and two miles uptown so and so was doing this" and the perspective would shift to that character (in the same paragraph!). I found that jarring. But I still enjoyed this interpretation of "Concrete Jungle". Now on to "Cold War" (picked up the Predator omnibus so I'm making my way through it).