Alien: Covenant - Origins - Prequel Novel

[Perfect-Organism]

Your explanation regarding Keiko works perfectly fine by me.  There is no reason to expect that only Hideo would be memorable as the only W-Y CEO of significance.  While I seem to remember Hideo only having a daughter, the cache of having a Yutani as a last name might have been passed down maternally.  It all works.  Thanks for that explanation.

[SM]

No worries. 

[TheBATMAN]

Just finished it. What an utterly bizarre story and pretty much a complete waste of time.

[Perfect-Organism]

I enjoyed it as a book.  I pretty much took myself out of the idea that there would be aliens involved and just enjoyed the world building.

What really struck me though, was that throughout the book, there was this feeling like a revelation was about to occur.  I had the sense that behind the visions of OTBD, there were some sort of Engineer machinations, but well, that never came to be, so yes, the story really didn't serve much purpose...

[Wweyland]

Pretty much hated it. I think it's the worst Alien novel out there, but Aliens: Bug Hunt gives it a run for its money.
Some of my ideas that could have improved this novel:

• Give the Earthsavers a charismatic leader who is actually a good villain. He could have been a Tyler Durden or Jim Jones type that better explains why anyone would follow a "prophet" nobody.
  
• Have the Earthsavers at least succeed in part of their plots. Basically, they try 6 different attempts to cancel the mission and fail miserably each time. Why not let them succeed partially at first and let the mission be delayed for some time. That would make them more effective villains and let the heroes struggle more.
  
• The Jutou combine is a worthless red herring. Every character keeps talking about them but the reader knows from the second chapter that they are not behind the plots. Either reveal the actual threat later, make the Jutou a part of the plot or remove this filler.
  
• Have more consistency with the Earthsavers. They don't want to kill anyone but they kill 4 bodyguards in cold blood. Later it is said that nobody was killed. In the farm attack it is described how scores of people get killed and later the W-Y executive is congratulated that there were no fatalities. What?
  
• Actually focus on David and Shawn as a parallel storyline and flesh out the Covenant characters more.
  
• 
  Actually tie into the Alien: Covenant novel. I have not read that yet but I know ADF wrote them "out of order" and there are no references to Origins in the other book.
  

[SM]

Jutou provided some world building.

[Xiggz456]

The world building was about the only thing worthwhile in this story imo. So my question is would anyone be interested in an Alan Dean Foster original Alien novel with actual Aliens in them now?

[SM]

Yes

[Xiggz456]

Ya I think he deserves a shot at an original story. I wonder if he's read the old EU as I noticed parallels to the older stories. For instance the "Earthsavers" serve as the antagonist in a similar manner to Salvaje's fanatics in "Earth War/Outbreak" as well as ninjas a la "Music of the Spears". Probably just coincidence but just something I noticed.

[Corporal Hicks]

I would love ADF to do an original Aliens novel! And honestly, I believe there is still room for Alien-less novels too.

[Wweyland]

Yes, let the man write an original Alien novel and give him some time to do it. I feel like Origins was rushed.

[Scorpio]

Walter was rushed, had to get him ready for the mission.

Therefore, exploitable by David.

[SM]

And yet - not.

[Scorpio]

Wouldn't mind elaborating on that? 

[HybridNewborn]

Now that the David's Drawings book has been announced, and I'm no longer massively disappointed/salty about the deceptive advertising surround this prequel novel, I've gone back and am giving it another shot after putting it down a few chapters in and not touching it again since it initially came out back in September. I'm about... almost halfway through and it's a decent enough story so far I suppose, though obviously not the one people thought they were getting, or one that anyone had particularly wanted or asked for. Seeing from that interview with ALF that he wasn't the one who came up with the pitch, he was handed the brief by FOX and Titan, so I guess props to him for working with what he had.