Final thoughts:
It loses momentum for me over the final 150 or so pages, but I would still put it up there with The Cold Forge & Out of the Shadows as one of the more successful books in the series. I think my main problem is that this book does a really thorough job of building up an engaging group of characters, and has a really good eye on crafting a compelling human story that says quite a bit about various non-Alien franchise things, only to leave us with an extended ending sequence focused on physical action that doesn't serve as much of a culmination of any of those substantive elements. Boring battle scenes, and then more boring battle scenes. None of that stuff was very interesting to read,
Spoiler
especially considering Albus Dumbledore dies too early, eliminating a solid thread of tension
. A lot could have been cut and/or summarized. In particular, everything closely orbiting battle tactics. Anything involving the chess game Liyah plays, and then the considerations of that information coming up later. I found all of that excruciatingly boring from a pacing perspective. I'm not planning a D&D campaign.
Overall, you could cut a lot from this and still have a solid novel. I thought it was a cool idea and it was mostly well executed. It was generally a fun book to read, and I felt like it did a good job of reaching for more than the vast majority of Alien novels. The portrayal of the Aliens was effective, which feels like a roll of the dice each time I start reading one of these. Still have to be
that guy about the proofing of the book. The typographical errors are persistent through the whole thing.
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For instance, was it 318 or 319 years? Two numbers are given on the same page.
Not a good look. If I was the Fox/Disney suit in charge of these books, that would piss me off.
Other disjointed thoughts:
* This was a better YA novel than Echo.
* The
fat character is named Panda, and is generally described as being overweight and good at his job because his job is sedentary, which is good because he won't have to move around much, which would be difficult for him because he's fat. See the pattern? The book constantly reminds you that Panda is the
fat character. For all the self-awareness of the novel, this is never reconciled from what I could tell. It's just there so you can laugh at a fat person. Panda is fat, and that's all there is to it. These moments are straight up 90s Adam Sandler.
*
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The book ending with the image of Liyah cradling her baby has a very man-writing-women-characters vibe to it. It's a woman so she better have kids!
*
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The plot twist is cool, but it was predictable. The book was relying on subverting Alien conventions by transitioning to sword & shield, so, the PLEASE DON'T SPOIL THIS plea at the beginning basically revealed that something worth spoiling was going to happen, and my mind immediately leapt to The Village in space. Plot wise, it's fine. It makes sense and I think it's a cool idea. However, I still don't really get how you could go 300+ years and no one would ever have discovered the leaves had a chemical property to them that blocked the acid blood. But okay. Also, when did we decide that if someone is an android, their dialogue has to be really badly written? This character dials back all the interesting progress made by Davis in the Zula Hendricks stories.
* I would read more novels in this particular series/thread if more were published. I would even look forward to them! I think there's still a lot you can do with this concept.