I agree, Hicks, I would have loved to see just how troublesome the Yautja can be as they've been said to be in the background.
I think that Mr. Lebbon has saved up some of their more destructive weaponry for the next two books. Like you said before, this one's mainly a set up establishing the new world and Lebbon focused on us in order to keep Predators mysterious and alien.
Happypred, I can sympathise with your feeling on Predators being portrayed the way they are. But do note that Yautja here were unprepared and yet still put up some kind of fight.
The ones towards the end felt much more imposing than the few hunters we've seen before. I mean, the Elder, damn, he looked like he meant business. Also Hashori was decked in more armour and kicked some butt
Spoiler
while carrying an Android.
Remember, the Rage are FAR more advanced than humanity. They can turn your brain into loyal nanobots through a simple broadcasted message. They've experimented with alien technology left behind by Dog-Aliens who seem to be millions of years ahead of us.
The Yautja's sole motivation for advancing seems to be the hunt, unlike us who are curious about the universe and want to learn and explore more, they only seem to want to go out there and kill the most deadliest things. So I don't expect the Yautja to hold the secrets to life or anything whereas the Dog-Aliens seemed to be like us or Engineers, a curious people who wanted to go far beyond their capabilities while the Yautja stick to what their capable of.
I can understand how you feel about what was shown despite what was being said, I agree with you and Hicks, like I said above, Tim Lebbon has likely saved some of their more state of the badass gear for the sequel books.
I don't think the Predators got massacred by humans, because we only found such a low number of them. And remember, they killed some of us too. The Rage however, I can say they got massacred by their Aliens, however, they too massacred the Aliens, all of this happened off screen
Spoiler
apart from the events in the Zeere-Za.
Predators are not always outclassed by the humans, I did point out how a single burst of lasers seriously damaged a marine ship. Predators are more "offense" than "defence" oriented. And remember, their stealth technology far outclasses anything we have. Human cloaks are easily detected by Yautja whereas their cloaks outclass us within at least a week or month after they notice that we reverse-engineered theirs.
Also,
Spoiler
they did get a Rage general, you only see the aftermath and I felt that was badass, the Android's mouth was literally punched into its face and the top half of his body was stuck to the wall.
But now, my friend, they're ready.
Spoiler
The message that Isa Palant broadcast was sent across the entire galaxy, the Yautja know what has attacked them and I'm sure they'll retaliate.
I am excited to read Mr. Lebbon's answers to our questions.