Alien/Predator Novel Reviews

Started by Hudson, Aug 19, 2014, 04:55:43 PM

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Alien/Predator Novel Reviews (Read 70,255 times)

Kradan

Kradan

#315
Quote from: Gentleman Death on Jun 26, 2020, 03:33:25 PM
That really bothered me and there were several times I almost felt like I was reading a Starship Troopers type of book.

That's actually great way to put it

Xiggz456

Xiggz456

#316
So I finally got my hands on all 4 DH Press Predator books and just finished the first one  "Forever Midnight" by John Shirley. Well overall this was pretty much the wackiest Predator story I've read. I wasn't expecting the story to take place in 2117 on a distant planet but I ended up liking the descriptions of the planet and the corresponding wildlife (kind of reminded me of Zagreus from Alien Echo). Also interesting to note that this novel had the Predators abducting humans and dumping them on this "preserve planet" to hunt (sound familiar?); so in some ways we have another case like Predator 2 where a Dark Horse story may have influenced the film as this novel released in '06 four years before "Predators". For the most part I enjoyed the action sequences in novel. However, I really disliked the Predator POV as it seemed rather silly, as did a certain mind control aspect. The human characters weren't especially interesting and I really didn't like how he treated Georgie (she went from a badass, Do whatever it takes soldier to an unreasonable antagonist with no clear reasoning why). The Atavites were mildly interesting but somewhat underutilized and the Karna was somewhat amusing (Shirley seems to love English speaking ET's as this character reminded me of Larry from Steel Egg). This is my first foray into the term Hish and I'm not so sure about it as they seemed incompetent (40 preds total on a hunt?!). Overall I probably wouldn't recommend this, Shirley pretty much missed the mark on both of his DH Press novels.

SM

SM

#317
Rodriguez wrote the original Predators story back in the mid-90s.

Xiggz456

Xiggz456

#318
Totally forgot about that script! although both the script and this novel are way over the top in a bad way. I remember you saying Shirley read somewhat right wing in regards to "Steele Egg" and that continues on in this book where one of the ships is named the "John McCain" (for those that don't know McCain was Obama's opposition for president in '08).

HuDaFuK

HuDaFuK

#319
Quote from: Xiggz456 on Jun 28, 2020, 02:59:58 PMSo I finally got my hands on all 4 DH Press Predator books and just finished the first one  "Forever Midnight" by John Shirley. Well overall this was pretty much the wackiest Predator story I've read.

I hated that book but the DH Press Predator run skyrockets after that; the other three are absolutely ace.

Corporal Hicks

Agreed. I think Predator had the worse of DH Press' books, and the best of them too.

Xiggz456

Xiggz456

#321
That's reassuring!

Gentleman Death

Gentleman Death

#322
Finished Alien Harvest to complete the Omnibus Vol. 2 novels. This book was odd. The first half was really tough to get through and didn't seem to really start picking up until Stan takes the Xeno pills.

The relationship between Julie and Stan made no sense and her whole "Thief" thing got tiring, real quickly.

I didn't like how Genocide and Harvest explained the aliens and the hives. I had a hard time believing that Julie, Stan and the Android Gill could make it through a hive alive. That and how the writers always referred to the Aliens as dumb, I personally never thought of them like that, or as bugs.

Also, the ending of Harvest didn't make any sense. Why Stan was taking back to the hive and not Julie????

Nonetheless, not horrible but by no means great.

HuDaFuK

HuDaFuK

#323
That one's easily my least favourite of the Bantam run.

Other than a couple of awesomely graphic Alien kills
Spoiler
(especially loved the bit where that one mutineer gets his face peeled off)
[close]
I really struggled with it.

Corporal Hicks

The last time I tried to read Harvest I did struggle to get into it. Can't remember the novel version that well.

Though Genocide I really loved. I really enjoyed Grant's character journey in that one.

SM

SM

#325
Harvest, Genocide and Rogue were all inferior to the source material. And the source material for Harvest and Rogue we wasn't the strongest to begin with.

SiL

SiL

#326
I didn't mind the Genocide novelisation, but I think I stopped a quarter of the way through Harvest. I love reading Harvest, but that's 99% the moody artwork and 0.5% android ants. The remainder is the story.

I think my favourite of the old adaptations is Berserker. Substantially better than the source material, and the source material was already a pretty solid effort on its own.

HuDaFuK

HuDaFuK

#327
Berserker is easily the best of the Bantam books if you ask me.

SM

SM

#328
Yep.

Genocide was pretty good, but seemed to take much longer to get to the planet in the novel.

Gentleman Death

Seems like I'm going to be needing to pick up the graphic novels once I'm done with the omnibus books.

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