Finished it.
Spoiler
After all that, it didn't even end with a kiss?
As The Old One would say, this book was white bread. Didn't realize YA books were written for parents to be comfortable buying them for their sheltered kids. Nothing about this book took any risks, especially if there's nothing new or unique about the target audience.
Here's a review on Goodreads which
echoes many of my thoughts:
QuoteI wanted to love this. I really did. From the moment I found out about this book before its release I waited in anticipation and bought it the moment it came out. I am a hardcore Aliens fan and settled in for a horror story of a teenager trying to protect her sister. That is what I expected. That is not what I got. I got a YA romance novel with a dash of aliens for seasoning. The MC was much more concerned about her "maybe girlfriend" to care about anything else going on in the book. Deaths don't effect her, she doesn't care, so long as it isn't the "maybe girlfriend". Adults are useless. There is one scene where an adult is present and as soon as anything starts happening seems to vanish. Then after everything it says the person kind of shakes themselves awake. Really!? An adult just stood there and did nothing! This book seems to have very low opinions of teenagers. Maybe the author forgot what it was like to be a teenager. But I'm pretty sure that even the flakiest teenager would stop mooning over the person they like in order to survive an alien attack. I did not find the characters believable. Everyone is useless except the main character, there is no urgency for survival, no tension, no fear. Forget marines they just need to send in this girl. As I said I wanted to love it but it wasn't what I expected at all. Want a good alien read then go read Alien: Out of Shadows.
Quote from: SM on Jun 04, 2019, 08:57:09 PM
Quote
My main gripe is that it's boring and the characters are one-dimensional, regardless of their sexual orientation. I couldn't give two shits about that. As cliche as it is for a teenager to obsess over being kissed, it would obviously be more cliche if it was Olivia and Michel. But the book doesn't take any real risks other than a mere introduction of a progressive romance among adolescents. If this book wants to pretend like it's the first YA novel to lean into LGBTQ+ territory... LOL. Boring is about as bad a transgression as a piece of writing can commit. One-dimensional is about as bad a transgression as a writer can commit when creating characters. Flat characters are needed, as are foils. But it's a bit overboard when basically every character, again save Viola, has no dynamism or complexity. I couldn't care less about their orientation, but if you think my argument is homophobic, keep building a straw man. I predicted that response as soon as I sent the post.
Then construct better posts.
Thirty-plus years of Alien comics and novels, but apparently one single YA novel with a teenage lesbian protagonist is a "big push here to alienate ... the already existing fan base in favor of drawing in adolescent LGBTQ females".
'Big push to alienate'.
Oh, but apparently you "couldn't give two shits about that". One shit was plenty.
Oh, what a hero you are.
My posts are fine. You pick and choose what you want to respond to out of my posts to misrepresent my position while never really offering your own, which is typical. Nothing new there since you've become the shadow trustee of the Alien franchise EU.
If you hadn't been a consultant on this project, I doubt you would've cared to begin with. Hence why you're so comfortable calling out Cauldron, but refuse to engage in any opinion-based, subjective discussion on anything which you participated in yourself. No one's aloud to dislike Blackout, The WY Report, or now Echo when you're around. I wonder why?
As long as you see praise, you remain silent. The first sign of a dissenting opinion and you spring out of the woodwork to explain why a fan is wrong.