Alien/Predator Novel Reviews

[Wweyland]

Also liked the Predator 2 novelization. The Tony Pope POV-s just drop off in the middle of the book and would have liked some kind of final POV from the Predator in the end. But he gets his last thoughts before entering the ship I think.

[Saith]

Also liked the Predator 2 novelization. The Tony Pope POV-s just drop off in the middle of the book

Damn, I'll have to find a copy.

I'm using Tony in my story, continuing on a few years later from the LA events. He is a fun character to explore. It's been good to flesh him out a little more and add some depth.

[HuDaFuK]

Aliens: Steel Egg

I'm not sure why I was quite so surprised after reading Predator: Forever Midnight by the same author, but this was so bad I almost couldn't finish it. Bits and pieces were vaguely passable, but so much of it is just bizarre and awful, and by the time the heroes are running around with a pink Michelin Man alien called Larry it's just gone completely off the rails. I'm not sure which of Shirley's two novels are worse - probably this, because as shit as Forever Midnight is, its at least mostly about Predators. The Aliens felt like they were an afterthought in this and he really only wanted to write about Larry and his chums.

I thought Alien Harvest was bad, but this is without doubt the worst Alien novel I've read yet.

[SM]

I thought Shirley wrote the Aliens pretty well.  It was the humans that were severely lacking.

[Samhain13]

The portrayal of the aliens was the best part. 2 aliens outnumbered by a team of armed humans and they still dominate most of the time.

Everything else was okay to meh. Forever Midnight has like its own tier on my ranking due to how much worse it was for me next to all the others.

[HuDaFuK]

Some of the stuff with the Aliens on the Hornblower was quite well done, and until he literally pulled the embryo out I thought the scene where the guy goes nuts and tries to vivisect the Chestburster out of himself was effectively gruesome. But too much of the book was dedicated to the Giff, who only ever came across as completely daft. And as you say, SM, the human stuff was a real slog. I mentioned how awful Shirley's dialogue was in Forever Midnight when I reviewed that, and it was equally bad in this.

Oh yeah, a guy also fights an Alien with a sword and shield.

[SM]

Overall I didn't mind Steel Egg too much despite its myriad issues (Cauldron was way worse from that run of books), but Reynolds is possibly the laziest cliché ridden character in any Alien media.  It was as if he'd been written as one-dimensional and the next draft would try and flesh him out - but Shirley forgot.

[Samhain13]

Oh yeah, a guy also fights an Alien with a sword and shield.

I remember a guy killing an Alien with a crossbow to the head. Sword and shield? Must have not lasted very long.

[HuDaFuK]

Cauldron was way worse from that run of books

Damn. I was hoping these two Shirley novels would be the nadir.

I remember a guy killing an Alien with a crossbow to the head. Sword and shield? Must have not lasted very long.

Same guy. Attacks it with the sword, survives, then finishes it with the crossbow.

This was after we meet the friendly (non-penis head) alien called Larry. I was really struggling to get through it by that point.

[Samhain13]

Apart from some alien sequences in Caudron, everything else is average to bad. But this scene where

Spoiler

2 aliens cooperate together to manipulate the insides of a dead human to stimulate screaming so they can bait other hosts

[close]

was one of the creepiest part of the series.

[Corporal Hicks]

I remember enjoying Cauldron well enough. The part Samhain mentions is f**king ace. But over all, all the DH Press stuff was pretty meh or ok aside from Steel Egg. This was legitimately naff. Criminal Enterprise was the best, but its characters weren't likeable or massively interesting to compensate for that.

After Forever Midnight, Predator had it much better!

[SM]

I remember enjoying Cauldron well enough. The part Samhain mentions is f**king ace. But over all, all the DH Press stuff was pretty meh or ok aside from Steel Egg. This was legitimately naff. Criminal Enterprise was the best, but its characters weren't likeable or massively interesting to compensate for that.

After Forever Midnight, Predator had it much better!

Yeah I think Criminal Enterprise was the best too.  I found it better on the second read.  DNA War often gets shat upon but it was decent.  Hard to believe the dire Cauldron was by the same author.

[Wweyland]

Agreed on the vocal cords scene from Cauldron, that was some nasty stuff.
And Criminal Enterprise was probably the best out of the DH books, if not Original Sin.

[SM]

Original Sin was a little better on second reading but still mediocre.  It didn't really bear much similarity to the film it was based on.

[HuDaFuK]

That book's insanely expensive for some reason.