Alien: River of Pain (Book 3) - Reviews

Started by Perfect-Organism, Nov 18, 2014, 10:36:08 PM

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Alien: River of Pain (Book 3) - Reviews (Read 41,984 times)

gantarat

I wonder how Drukathi ship end up on LV-178 and have alien egg ?

Wweyland

Wweyland

#181
Just finished the book after owning it a long time.
It was OK, but I had big issues with the thing that have been mentioned here already.

There was a lack of detail and a lot of goofs:

http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/Alien:_Out_of_the_Shadows_trilogy_goofs

Hated the fact that there was a platoon of marines in the colony.
Seems kind of weird that platoon (30 marines) headed by a captain (Brackett) would be rescued by a squad (12 marines) headed by a lieutenant (Gorman). Having a couple of capable marines or some marshals (ex-marines) would have been totally fine.

Hated that there were 2 escape ships in the colony, having even 1 was ridiculous. The scientist escape ship hidden in some Dexters Lab style of a compartment that no one had discovered was quite convoluted.

I think the problem with the new EU is that they make them too tightly coupled with the movies. Each small detail that is out of place will be obvious for the fans. They should really try to avoid dates because they are quite bad with that. They should just have more self-contained stories with totally new characters.

*Fixed the link. Hicks

SM

SM

#182
RoP was the best story with the most mistakes.

(Not sure the dates were wrong though).

Wweyland

One thing I noticed with the dates (besides the problems listed in Xenopedia):
In RoP the colony has fallen on 26th of June, with Operations being massacred and Brackett leaving on the evac ship.
In Fire and Stone there are about 40 people running around in the colony on the 3rd of July, when the Onager is leaving.

You could explain this by the Onager crew (about 25% of Hadleys Hope) being holed up somewhere else for a week, and then making a final run for the Onager. But that's rather clunky.

SM


Prez

Quote from: Wweyland on Jan 11, 2018, 08:41:27 PM
Seems kind of weird that platoon (30 marines) headed by a captain (Brackett) would be rescued by a squad (12 marines) headed by a lieutenant (Gorman). Having a couple of capable marines or some marshals (ex-marines) would have been totally fine.

I could forgive that simply as I always felt the company only sent the Marines in Aliens with an inexperienced LT in charge to fail their mission - in other words on the hope that they would fail, barely survive and come back with an impregnated marine or Carter Burke to scuttle an egg or two back (or probably even the company didn't care if Burke was lost in the process too).

Totally get your issues with it but I still enjoyed this and the other 2 books in the series.

Listen to the audio dramatisation - it's really good and done by the same guy who produced the Out of the Shadows one.

HuDaFuK

HuDaFuK

#186
The biggest issue with there being a whole bunch of Marines there before the colony falls is no one in Aliens ever mentions them.

Anyone who knows anything about people in the military would know soldiers would absolutely give a shit about their brothers in arms, and there's no conceivable way or reason their presence would be kept from Gorman's squad.

Corporal Hicks

It really should have just been a small group of Colonial Marshall's. It was one of those cases of Fox going "people love marines, make sure you put them into the story."

HuDaFuK

Yeah, I really wish they'd used the Marshals. Not only would it have completely fit and made sense, it would've been a nice tie-in to Isolation.

Russ840

Yeah. A Colonial Marshal and a Deputy would have been a much better way to go.

Brackett could have easily been an ex Colonial Marine. Retired and seeking a quiet life out in te Frontier as a Colonial Marshal.

Would def been a nice nod to Isolation.

Wweyland

Other smaller things I was annoyed with:

No reference to John Marachuk.
Lydecker being mentioned only a couple of times, when he seemed to be second in command in Aliens: The Directors Cut
No seismic survey charges being used.
No last stand
Confusion with the SOS message being sent or not sent.
LV-426 having several Atmosphere Processors, but this was also referenced in the Aliens script and novel.

I will check out the Audio Drama, I really loved the Star Wars Radio Dramas a while back.


Prez

I kinda dug the idea about introducing the xeno's spewing their guts up on the colonists to paralyse them so they could be prepped for cocooning.

Interesting concept - kind of a different take on the barbed tale stinger in ADF's novelisation of Aliens (if memory serves me correct - read that back in the 1990s).

Ultramorph

RoP was my least favorite of that trilogy. They changed too much for no real reason, and it was fairly anticlimactic. One neat thing was how it tied in with Fire and Stone, even if they got the dates wrong.

I did really like the psychological elements where the planet drives that one character crazy in the beginning.

The stuff on the Derelict was cool, too, even if the egg placement was bizarrely incorrect. The Engineer and Queen mummified in their death struggle is a cool visual.

Corporal Hicks

Corporal Hicks

#193
Quote from: Ultramorph on Jan 12, 2018, 02:06:31 PM
I did really like the psychological elements where the planet drives that one character crazy in the beginning.

The frontiersman live angle was really interesting. Really dug that aspect of the early novel. It wasn't something I think we've seen a lot of in the expanded universe.

HuDaFuK

Yeah, the book had a couple if nice touches, but overall I thought it was such a missed opportunity I didn't end up liking it too much. Seemed like there was so much more hinted at in the film that really should've been in there. Marachuk, Newt trying to survive alone, the woman the Marines find alive in the hive... Overall I thought it could've/should've been a lot more tense and horrifying, instead of a poor Aliens imitation.

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