Finished River of Pain...
With this being the conclusion to the trilogy (Shadow and Sea being the first two installments) I'm happy it was last, as this was the weakest of the three.
I felt like this book at a lot of potential, especially with it centering around the fall of Hadleys Hope on LV-426/Acheron. Instead the first 200 pages wasted time on characters and stories that had no outcome or little to no involvement with the final product. Case in point, Captain Brackett and Draper. There was hinted at a possible power struggle and the two barely had any interaction. Why put this at all when the two are never together until the end and accomplished nothing?
The love story of newts parents, Anne and Russ, with Brackett being a past lover of Anne. It was a completely unnecessary and the story could've continued without it. Plus I feel it was only added to the story to somehow sympathize with how he feels with the end result.
It's briefly mentioned about the state of the planet being unstable a few years prior to the events happening at Hadleys Hope. Why? I don't know and confused as to how it was never was brought up again. There was a whole chapter of how the ground was splitting one of the processors....and then nothing, rather confusing.
Out of all the books I've been reading of Aliens, this one by far takes the cake on the weakest written chest bursting scene regarding Russ' character. I think it was, "He screamed in agony. Pain. Thing runs off." I had to reread the two sentences and roll my eyes.
This one probably bothered me the most. So, Russ comes back with the FH attached and they send people out to secure the ship. Instead of that, several people return with FHs attached, like 5 people. Now, Anne informed them what had happened but yet the people were stupid enough to go to the eggs anyway? Its a hard stretch for me. Annnddd when the aliens burst out from the colonists back at the med lab, they continue to let the aliens run off after coming out! Wtf!?
The little tie-ins to Aliens is nice though. Like why the marines weren't with Anne and Russ when they went to the location of the craft, I was wondering how the author was going to do that once I knew there would be marines at the colony.
I also liked how the aliens would "spit" on the humans faces to paralyze them so they could be moved easily. I hadn't thought of them needing to do anything like that but it makes sense and adds to it being even more intrusive.
Finally, the ending...now that I've read the trilogy and all three are open ended, what the hell happens...? Are any ever mentioned again? I mean, the ending to this was left with survivors...
The last 3/4s of the book was pretty good so it wasn't a complete eye roll. Overall I feel like the author did a swing and miss with this. Like I said in the beginning, it could've been so much greater, with the scale, fighting and outcome. Sadly it was mild when it should've been hot.
Bug Hunt is next....
Side note: below are the remaining Alien novels I have left. Should I read these in any type of order?
Prototype
Isolation
Phalanx
Cold Forge
Echo