Quote from: Slutty Badger on Oct 09, 2024, 12:12:08 PMQuote from: TheDerelict on Oct 09, 2024, 11:09:44 AMI think "pretty strong" is a stretch.
You don't think novels such as The Cold Forge and Into Charybdis are awesome, let alone "pretty strong"?
If you ask me, they're the benchmark for Alien fiction.
No.
Unfortunately I don't think Alex White is the messiah.
Cold forge is by far the best of the alien fiction, but considering what it's up against that's not really a high bar.
I don't really feel like it did anything that interesting, despite Dorian Sudler and Blue being a cool characters. It had some of the best action/Horror moments but I felt the ending was just a bit "meh"
It just kind of ends abruptly.
It was good but I believe it could have been better.
Into Charybdis is awful. Absolute fan wank. I've never understood the praise that's it got. So up its own arse with referencing Gigers alien 3 design and Balaji cigarettes etc.
I listened to the audiobook twice and bought the hardcover which I read earlier this year.
f**king boring. One hit wonder.
I gave cold forge a pass with its "where did you get alien eggs?"
"Shhhh, it's a secret. Government shenanigans."
But since then, every man jack and his dog is flying around the middle heavens with alien eggs. Boring and it makes no sense.
Cold forge is just aliens in a lab and then they escape. It's the best of a bad bunch but if that's the benchmark then I don't hold out much hope of it getting better.
Quote from: HuDaFuK on Oct 09, 2024, 01:55:42 PMQuote from: TheDerelict on Oct 09, 2024, 11:09:44 AMI think "pretty strong" is a stretch.
I don't
Out of the Shadows was let down by some studio-mandated silliness but was otherwise a solid read. Sea of Sorrows was fun in an oldschool Bantam kinda way.
The Rage War trilogy was ace, and refreshingly different.
Cold Forge and Into Charybdis need absolutely no introduction.
Phalanx was top-tier too.
Away from the Alien, If It Bleeds was stellar and Hunters and Hunted was also good.
That's ten of the first fifteen books they published ranging from decent to excellent; as for Cold Forge and Into Charybdis, like Slutty I think they're far and away the two best Alien novels that have ever been published. Titan's batting average up to about four years ago was pretty good.
Phalanx was ok but was about 200 pages too long. It was fairly obvious what the plot was from the get go and it dragged its heels getting there.
Also, the whole eating leaves to throw up a chest buster and being fine afterwards, f**k off.
As for the Rage war, yeah, was pretty ace as a stand alone sci fi story, had some cool ideas and great world building, also quite dark in areas and I liked that.
As an alien vs predator story, it sucked and if you believe it was ever written as an alien and/or predator story, I got bridge to sell ya.
Now if I'm wrong, fine, I will hold my hands up and say so, but I believe Tim Lebbon had already written that story and all he did was change "bad guy company" to Weyland yutani. "Space force rangers" to colonial marines. Change those aliens to xenos and these aliens to yautja or whatever.
That's why it bares f**k all resemblance to anything in the franchise, not because of Tim's unparalleled genius.
If I'm wrong then I'm wrong, but if I am wrong, that means it was deliberate when he wrote xenomorphs having to use breathing apparatus to survive in space.
Unforgivable 🧐