Thanks to forum members, such as SM, Samhain and Nightmare Asylum, who talked about Cold Forge in other threads, I learned about this novel. I was intrigued - I'm a sucker for good literary spin offs, such as Babylon 5's Psi Corps Trilogy or The Thing Zero Day - and since I'm in an Alien monomania phase these days, I couldn't wait to get my hands on the book.
And by the Engineers, it is AWESOME! <3 <3 <3
Past the terrible cover (the novel really deserves better cover art... in fact, no novel deserves cover art this bad), everything is good. The style is elegant and efficient, the pacing harmonious, the atmosphere thick and repulsive. I don't think I've ever read an Alien text which grasped the horror and beauty of the Giger beast like this. Even Foster's super creepy novelization of the first movie pales in comparison to White's masterpiece.
The story is structured around two magnificent characters. Blue Marsalis is an almost paralyzed, dying queer black scientist, in love with a female coworker; she uses a male robotic body to interact with the environment. Dorian Sulder is a sociopathic rich cishet white man, auditor for the Company, a perfect social predator with an artistic side, who quickly understand his true call when facing the impossible creature. Both characters will be lead to do terrible things, for different reasons, and a strong tension will develop between them, leading to a powerful conclusion.
The support cast contains some interesting characters, namely Anne, Marcus and Kambili, while making it painfully obvious that the extras are not just canon fodder, but human beings whose end will be a tragedy. Each aspect of the story is well-thought and executed, and you finish the book even before realizing you've started it, happy but hungry for more, and still haunted by the idea of the
plagiarus praepotens as the real face of the obsidian nightmare.
THANK YOU Alex White for such a great experience!
