The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume One

Aliens Omnibus #1

by Steve Perry, S.D. Perry

Classic original fiction set in the Alien world, featuring Earth Hive  by Steve Perry, Nightmare Asylum  by Steve Perry and The Female War  by Steve Perry and Stephani Perry.

Earth Hive:  

Wilks was a space marine with a near-fatal flaw:  he had a heart.  Billie was a child, the only survivor of a far-flung colony outpost.  Thrown together in the last hellish night of an alien invasion, Billie and Wilks helped each other get out alive.  Thirteen years later Wilks is in prison, and Billie lives in a mental institution, the nightmare memories of the massacre at Rim seared into her mind.  Now the government has tapped Wilks to lead an expedition to the aliens' home planet to bring back a live alien.  But the competition on Earth to develop the aliens as a new weapons system is brutal.  When Wilks's team departs on their mission, a trained assassin trails them.  And what follows is no less than guerrilla warfare on the aliens' planet--and alien conquest on Earth!

Nightmare Asylum:

Wilks, Billie, and Bueller were the last survivors of a devastating assault on the aliens' home planet.  But once their retum to the solar system made them refugees once more, fleeing Earth and its alien infestation in a desperate attempt to stay alive.  Now, in an otherwise unmanned military transport, they hurtle through space.  Destination: unknown.

Little do they know that the cargo they carry with them is a legacy of death that they will ultimately have to face. Nor do they know that they head toward a remote colony and military outpost.  This pocket of humanity at the very edges of space is at the mercy of a general names Spears with an agenda all his own.  Now Billie, Wilks, and Bueller face a new nightmare, and it is nothing they could ever have imagined: a gift of madness from an alien world, unbalanced mind, and the experiences of a mysterious pilot named Lieutenant Ellen Ripley.

The Female War:

Lieutenant Ellen Ripley awoke from her long journey in space with a hole in her memory and an overwhelming drive to survive.  When she meets Wilks and Billie, two battered veterans in the war against the alienss she realizes she's found two comrades in arms--and she's ready to take up the fight.  Only then does she discover the devastating secret that lurks behind her long sleep.  When she, Wilks, and Billie prepare to meet the aliens head-on to turn a powerful alien queen against her spawn in a battle intended to save Earth, that secret becomes her greatest weapon--and her greatest liability.  As the fate of Earth hangs in the balance, Ripley and Billie must come to terms with what it means to be an alien . . . and what it means to be human.

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror, Fiction, Aliens, Anthologies, Action, Novels

832 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 29, 2015

About the author

Librarians note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Steven Carl Perry has written over fifty novels and numerous short stories, which have appeared in various magazines and anthologies. Perry is perhaps best known for the Matador series. He has written books in the Star Wars, Alien and Conan universes. He was a collaborator on all of the Tom Clancy's Net Force series, seven of which have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list. Two of his novelizations, Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire and Men in Black have also been bestsellers. Other writing credits include articles, reviews, and essays, animated teleplays, and some unproduced movie scripts. One of his scripts for Batman: The Animated Series was an Emmy Award nominee for Outstanding Writing.

Perry is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, The Animation Guild, and the Writers Guild of America, West

Reviews

[Gareth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I found an old copy of it in a library on a military camp in the Middle East and was hooked straight away. The 3 stories flow more like one as they all follow on from each other, involving the same characters. The stories are really well written with a good couple of twists added in for good measure. There are some really interesting characters that are really well written and carry on throughout the book(s), there are a few boring ones too however i won't spoil the book with my own opinions.

I have bought the next 2 books in the series to read after this based on this first book.

[Neon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pre-review:

I am going ahead and rereading all the books I can get my hands on.

Excited. I'm not so excited for Mary-Sue Billie, though.

[Louie the Mustache Matos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I admit that the Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume One written by Steve Perry with the last book in the series cowritten by Perry and his daughter S.D. (Stephani) Perry is largely derivative of the Aliens movies, the stories are pretty dang cool. Consequently, my rating for the entire trilogy is high due to the act that there are three novels, laced with action, blood, gore, and horrors to make the most jaded hardcore horror fan, geek out like a fanboy.

Book One of the trilogy is Earth Hive based on the Dark Horse graphic novels of the same name. When a colonial marine and a young girl must rely on each other to make it through an alien infestation, they of course are going to have acclimation issues. Wilks is in a jail, and Billie is in a mental ward. Then, they are asked to return to capture a living alien. What could go wrong?

Book Two is called Nightmare Asylum. Wilks and Billie escape with Bueller, one of the marines that was part of their safety escorts. They fully intended to get to safety, but when that proved an impossibility, they opted to find a planet that could be judged safe. The military outpost that they perceive to be secure, has been compromised and the General is unwelcoming.

Book Three is The Female War. Ripley joins Wilks and Billie to attempt to turn an alien queen against her drones and babies in order to reclaim compromised planets. There may be a larger cast, but this third novel requires an increased body count, crazier plots, and buckets of gory goodness. The five stars are not for perfection, but due to some really interesting story beats, rated R for expletive-laced language, sexual situations, and intense suspenseful battle scenes.

[Luke Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robust and pulpy, each story has its slam bang blood and guts moments, which seem to build through each story and culminate in the final act of the final story, feeling like the season finale of a long-running tv show. However, echoes of the so tangible tension of Alien are lost in attempts to capture the edge of the seat excitement of Aliens, though not one of the stories seems to carry the razor-edged plot of either one of those films. Each character seems to have their moment, though the character of Billie shows the most growth by far over the complete arc of the three stories. Fans of Alien will be disappointed in the patience such tension needs to be built, and the proper atmosphere and pace true sci-fi/horror requires, but fans of Aliens (and maybe even Starship Troopers) will be satisfied with the level of action and the quick pace of this omnibus edition.

[Az Vera · Rating 3 out of 5]

For fans of the Aliens movies, this omnibus is a great introduction to the expanded universe material and has some great tie-ins with much loved characters (well, mostly xenomorphs).

I'll start with my main over-arching gripe with all three novels; the central characters are just Hudson and Newt from the Aliens movie but with different names. The backstory for both of them is a carbon-copy of the outcomes of the 1986 film Aliens but with different names. It feels like the author wanted to expand upon their adventures after the film but couldn't due to the other movies/books in the series.

All three books are fun action/horror sci-fi with familiar set pieces and plots that don't give you the feeling you just read the same tale three times. The gore descriptions can sometimes be a bit over the top but doesn't destroy the enjoyment of the books.

Earth Hive

The two separate plots running through the book, one on Earth and one following Wilks and Billie create a feeling of omniscience within the reader but with the growing tension that comes from knowing the protagonists are completely unaware of what you're privy too. The concepts of artificial life and family work well within the confines of the tale and don't feel too forced, they're shallow but that's all you want in this easy-reading genre.

Nightmare Asylum

General Spears is a disturbingly well-architected character. While not deep or multi-dimensioned, he pushes the plot along at a steady pace in his stone-faced obsession with winning the war against the xenomorphs in his own hubristic way. He generates fear in the readers and disgust, a well crafted villain that really stands out in this tale.

The Female War

The first book to introduce Ellen Ripley as a character, she represents a beacon of hope that feels like a nice touch to the final book in the omnibus. This tale strongly focuses on redemption and salvation and is the perfect counterpoint to the frustration in the first and fear in the second.

[George Blaylock · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is kinda dumb...

[McKenzie Rae Santiago · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly? The first two stories were great. The last story, not so much. I don’t really like when series bring a beloved character back just for remember berries.

I was really confused when they mentioned Ripley in the story having been “lost” after she arrived at a “prison planet”. Meaning Alien 3. But for those who have seen that crap ass film, know that Ripley dies at the end having a Queen alien bust from her chest.

So how is she alive? Spoiler alert, shes an android and she doesn’t know it until a dr on the ship does a blood sample.

Then she goes into a despair spiral and becomes useless until Billie kicks her ass out of it.

Also? I liked Billie enough through the book until she literally decided she was going to sacrifice the entire mission to try and find a girl she “feels like is her daughter” just because she’s been watching transmissions of her.

Literally almost gets all her people killed just because she wants to find this girl. Like no you are not Ellen Ripley and you do not have a relationship like Ellen did with newt. Go away Jesus Christ.

So? All in all, liked the first two stories, didn’t like the 3rd. Win some lose some I suppose.

[Jim Carreer · Rating 3 out of 5]

So it's hard to review this in a single go because it's three books and not one. I liked the first two stories better than the last, which I felt ended rather abruptly. I won't spoil it, and it's easy to draw your own conclusions on what happens but I really would have liked an epilogue. I know there are more books in the series but I've actually read the fourth out of order, and know it picks up several years or even a decade after the events of the last story, and provides very little insight into what happened to the third books characters. All the character-types will be very familiar to fans of the movies, multiple strong female protagonists, the strong silent male marine types, etc. I found the first two books more interesting than the third because they (especially the second) had human villains and I think this franchise does its best story telling when it compares the banal and insipid evil humans are capable of against the unthinking and visceral evil of the series's titular monsters.

[Manolo González · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just couldn´t keep my eyes off this comic, I was totally inmerse in this work, totally loved it! Some of my questions about the alien's franchise were answered in this very volume.

[David Prowting · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed getting back into the Alien universe, especially with Alien Earth out now.

[Szahra]

DNF

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read these as a teen in the 90s and still enjoyable three decades later.
The first two books, in this omnibus, are still good and still deserve to be a movie. The third book is a little ehhh. The plot feels rushed along and thin on details. In the first two books it feels okay to be low on details at times, as you have few set pieces, but the third tries to do a lot in a small amount of space with multiple locations. Spend a lot of time with a setup and then rush rush rush, to finish plot lines. Plus the last bit with weird acts by a certain character, because "feelings" which could cost the entire mission is blah.

If your an Alien fan. Read it.

Now on to Omnibus book 2 containing books 4 and 5.
(I own the first seven original books from the 90s, so until book eight it's all "Oh I remember this.")

[Jordan Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I needed a break from my normal reading fare. I’m glad I decided to go out on a limb and get this collection.

I don’t consider myself a huge Alien fan. Like most everyone I enjoyed the first 2 films and can easily agree that Alien itself was a trendsetter and the first true atmospheric sci-fi horror film. Without it we wouldn’t have films like Event Horizon or even Annihilation nor would video games like Doom or Dead Space have been as popular as they were. But even so, I’ve been more of a causal fan than anything else

The Complete Aliens Omnibus just changed that for me. With the 3 collected novellas, the franchise goes far beyond the movies and introduces us to even more storylines and more depth.

Both “Earth Hive” And “Nightmare Asylum” are great reads. They read more like Aliens, substituting action and violence for sheer terror, but that’s ok. They’re both run and gun thrillers, with the requisite amount of bloodshed (human, xenomorph and android) and violence. Both stories are worthy successors to the Alien franchise. “The Female War” was the weakest of the bunch, feeling like an unnecessary pseudo-conclusion to the previous 2 short novels. Wasn’t bad or hard to read, but it just didn’t catch me the same way the other 2 did.

Overall, this was a great collection. Can’t believe I skipped over it for the last couple of years, though I’m glad I’ve been able to get my hands on a copy. Hell, I already have the second volume coming in the mail as I write this review.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this whole thing in one go gave me some burn-out, but as a collection it's pretty dang cool and it has that creepy, stale Alien-world vibe. There were some memorable psychos and some unexpected heroes. Hot diggity dawg!

[Jeff Jellets · Rating 3 out of 5]

”Eat hot plasma death, alien scum,” Blake said. Bueller stared at her. “I always wanted to say that,” she said.

Maybe the comics were better.

Though I didn’t know it going in, The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume 1 includes author Steve Perry’s three book novelization of the first Dark Horse Comics’ Alien stories. Set after the Aliens movie, the series was originally written as a coda to the second movie, following survivors Hicks and Newt after their return from LV-426. But that was before the shitshow of Aliens3. With Hicks and Newt casually butchered off-screen in the first frames of that flick, Perry (and Dark Horse) had to retcon their two main characters into newcomers Wilks and Billie.

Unfortunately, since it’s a retcon, Wilks and Billie share identical backstories to the original characters – right down to the scars on Wilks’s face from his brush with the xenomorphs’ acid blood in the second movie. With identical Alien invasions of two planets with identical outcomes, it’s just dumb. It also robs the story of a number of emotional beats that the original creators clearly meant to be important (as the ‘old’ band comes back together), and for the new reader (like me) unfamiliar with the publishers’ backstory, it’s distracting. I kept scratching my head through most of the first book trying to puzzle past the continuity hitches.

Setting that aside (these problems aren’t really of the original creators’ making), the first book Earth Hive is the omnibus’s strongest entry, the better part of it delivering a white-knuckle assault on an Alien nest by a group of space marines. It climaxes with a wicked twist as the surviving marines make their escape, clicking a major plot point into place with a rather deftly delivered surprise. Unfortunately, the good in this one is sandwiched between a far too ambitious backstory involving corporate exploitation of the xenomorphs and an Alien-worshipping religious cult that eventually leads to the earth’s infestation. Throw in a living version of the elephant-trunked alien from the first Alien movie (who arrives deus ex machina just in time to keep the plot going, but never comes back in the series) and it’s ‘everything and the kitchen sink’ mixed into this one.

The second book Nightmare Asylum introduces us to the stereotypical, megalomaniacal sociopathic general Thomas A.W. Spears who is hatching a plot to lead his own army of aliens to take back earth (because the ‘aliens-to-weapons’ strategy has worked SO WELL all the other times it’s been tried). Wilks and Billie prove remarkably inept protagonists this time around as they lead a failed coup against Spears, get all their allies killed, loose the asteroid base to the xenomorphs, and then fail a second time to kill Spears in space. Not to worry though. Predictably, once Spears makes earthfall his alien soldiers eat him in a paragraph or two. Outside of a surprise ending, this one really is ‘much ado about nothing.’

The Female War, the final volume of the series, brings everything to a head in a dodgy storyline that takes the protagonists to yet another alien-infested planet to capture a new uber-queen xenomorph who, when brought to earth, will summon all the terrestrial aliens together, allowing the humans to nuke this new mega-hive and take back their planet. By this point, Perry (now joined in the writing chores by his daughter Stefani) must have be forewarned that Aliens3 had fubar'ed his main characters, and the introduction and retcon of another character from the original movies is handled much better here. Unfortunately, outside of that, the last book in this series offers nothing really new. The pursuit, capture, and deposit of the uber-queen on earth feels rather rote and there’s never much meat put on the bone to explain her significance -- except as a plot device that gives the heroes a way to kill millions of aliens with one button push.

There’s also a tonal issue with the books. Alien was always adult sci-fi, but it was never ‘dirty.’ This round of books though seems to lean more heavily into the trope that all scary movies benefit from both a ‘high body and booby count’ as a lot of gratuitous sex gets included. Far from me to be prudish, but having Billie strip to salaciously lure some bad-buy marines into a hallway sex act -- while the base is being overrun by face-ripping aliens mind you! -- seems outlandishly stupid and prurient. Wilks and Billie’s sharing showers is worse though and just outright disturbing. With the characters modeled on Hicks and Newt, the Aliens movie (and even the first book in this series) set an almost surrogate father-daughter relationship between the two. To have it turn sexual is both unrealistic -- not to mention ‘icky’ – and just feels like lazy writing.

I do love the Alien franchise and maybe after hitting a string of very good, licensed property books, my expectations for this series were a bit too high. Consider me disappointed because while there were some good things about these stories, The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume 1 was more miss than hit.

[Fiannawolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biased Aliens fan loves really awesome trilogy. No one surprised.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

In terms of expanded movie tie-in material, the first trilogy of Alien books make for a solid enough reading experience, even though they’re also goofy as hell. Adapted from a series of Dark Horse comic books, these stories mostly take inspiration from James Cameron’s Aliens and his depiction of the Xenomorph as a glorified extraterrestrial insect, which slightly bums me out because I’m a bigger fan of Ridley Scott’s depiction in the original film.

Earth Hive-The first book is really trying to emulate Aliens. In fact, the comic it’s based on was a continuation of that film before Alien 3 arrived and retconned Hicks and Newt into an early grave. Their characters were renamed for the novelization. Now, there just happened to be another infestation of Aliens on a distant colony world, where a lone Colonial Marine and a young, orphaned girl were the only survivors. This book was entertaining enough, and all of these are so short that you can’t even feel like your time was wasted if you didn’t enjoy it. It does bother me though that they introduce a random Engineer who appears hellbent on wreaking havoc on Earth only for the author to completely forget about him in the subsequent sequels.

Nightmare Asylum-This had a really fun premise for an Alien story, but the idea of trained Aliens running around with guns is just so incredibly goofy.

The Female War-A decent enough ending I suppose, even though the idea that there’s a queen of queens for the Aliens to rally around kind of feels like a lazy deus ex machina, although I suppose I can’t really blame the author because he’s just adapting the comic books.

Overall, the writing is snappy and entertaining, even though it can also feel crass at times. The characters certainly haven’t left a lasting impression on the fandom. Maybe these stories work better as comic books. Still, I’ve read far worse expanded universe material from other franchises. These are relatively harmless, quick reads for fans of Cameron’s Aliens.

[Kirk Lane · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK I am reading The comic book of The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume One. I read on here the author does Steve Perry the very first book says it’s called the hive, but in the comic books it is called outbreak But the premise is the same.

But here’s my question? Anybody read the comic book? In the comic book it is seemingly about a guy named Wilks and a girl name Billy he goes back into space to the home planet of the Zeno morphs.But the The comic it also seems to jump around ALOT Almost like a soap opera. It drives me crazy. I do not know what’s going on. One minute I’m talking bout wilks in space he’s training people, then it’s talking about Billy he rescues her. Then all of a sudden there’s a small love Scene.?(not sure what’s that’s bout) not to mention I think the pregnant hooker scene, then there is a scene about a TV show, then escaped convict psychopath, then an alien on earth? What exactly is going on. Do the other following books nightmare asylum, female war get better.

Please anybody with any insight to this please help me or point me in the right direction thank you for your tim

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection consists of three books previously published. At this point, I have finished the first book "Earth Hive". I plan on revisiting this review as I complete each book.

Regarding "Earth Hive", this book is a novelized version of a series of comic books put out by Dark Horse comics that were as sequel to the movie "Aliens". Pretty straightforward, right? 😂 The original comic characters were Newt and Hicks but in later reprints that was changed to Wilkes and Billy after Alien 3 was released. I'm not 100% sure why because even with the change, the continuity in the comics and this book still clearly clashed with "Aliens 3" etc. All that said, I really enjoyed this book. The characters are interesting, the story is both personal and epic depending on what characters/setting are being addressed and the story feels like it belongs in the universe established in the movies. The book has some very scary moments and ideas including an answer for the what if scenario of a xenomorph loose on earth!

[Todd R · Rating 3 out of 5]

** Spoilers possible **
This is a review for the omnibous as a whole...Overall an entertaining read. The first two books in the set really are the bees knees...the third book "Female War" is a dud, a one star, probably a .5 star....and seriously makes me think twice about buying the next omnibus. If the collection had only contained the first two books I would have been on board for the next omnibus and bought it the day I finished the first (which was this morning)...but the "Female War" really stole from me any excitement I had for the following collections.
I like Billie and Wilks, but by the third book the need of the authors to do their best to kill off everyone else but for them was just a humorous sub-plot. The third book's premise is really very hard to believe - let alone plausible, but who knew it could be accomplished in less than 3 pages.
The first two books kept it honest - Aliens, Marines, Death, Destruction, a few oddball characters thrown in, and a few cool settings. The third book just tried to do too much and ended up an awkward mess.

[Terry Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let me begin with two important notes: First, even though this collection is made up of three separate novels, they work together as a cohesive piece. In fact, I’m not sure that reading them individually or “out of order” would be easy or satisfying. Second, these stories are much more in the vein of Aliens than Alien--think James Cameron’s strong action sequences instead of Ridley Scott’s Lovecraftian horror. That being said, these three novels were fun. They moved at a breakneck pace with somewhat twisting plots that were still quite easy to follow. The main characters--Wilks and Billie--were not terribly complex, but you cared about them and wanted to see them succeed. What was most striking about this trilogy was how expansive it was. Whereas the source material occurred in hyper-claustrophobic settings, these books covered…well, the whole earth along with several different planets. Successes and failures were consequential, and since these books are canon, I look forward to seeing where the next fifteen or so novels go.

[Nate Bloch · Rating 3 out of 5]

These Alien Omnibus books are a fun way to revisit the Alien universe, and are in a lot of ways much better than some of the recent films that have become additions to the franchise.

All three novellas in this omnibus are strong entries and do a good job of replicating the relationships from Aliens. The world is consistent and captivating and the action is well articulated. In place of Hicks and Newt the authors have created the new characters of Wilks and Billie — for reasons I don’t quite understand; why not simply use the original characters? But somehow the new additions work and the stories are well paced pace turners.

These books do have the feeling of being hammered out quickly and with little supervision. There are typos left and right, grammatical errors, and the general feel of a hands off approach by the editors — assuming there is an editor overseeing these publications. But the relationships the authors create and the plots they drop them into overcomes the editorial shoddiness of these books. I’m excited to read volume 2.

[Israha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je hodně znát, že se jedná o novelizaci komiksových příběhů. Komiksovost z tohoto sborníku doslova srší, a to v mnoha ohledech. Vyprávění má zběsilé tempo, lokace se střídají obrovskou rychlostí, zvraty přicházejí z ničeho nic, postavy se objevují a umírají často bez nějakého výraznějšího dopadu na děj, násilí a nechutnosti jsou popisovány explicitně a "dekorativně", vše je popisováno velmi doslovně. Mrazivá horrorová atmosféra prvních vetřelčích filmů je zde zkrátka nahrazena nekončící a pořádně drsnou sci-fi akcí, takže kniha zaujme spíš fanoušky Alien univerza obecně, než jen fanoušky filmů. Hloubkou a propracovaností tyto příběhy holt nepřekvapí...ale čtou se zatraceně dobře :). Jen škoda místy trochu lajdáckého překladu.

[Aricson Knoblock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, it was pretty fun to go back and visit some of this older material. The corruption within the government, the military, and the Weyland-Yutani corporation rears its ugly head in a well-written way. Despite the pacing issues of each individual book within this collection (slow out of the gate, aliens don't really show up until about halfway through each book, and everyone but main characters die incredibly quickly), the action and plot really engaged me throughout. My only real gripe is how ridiculously horny the characters are at times. The surrogate father-daughter relationship between Billie and Wilks was a great other-side-of-the-same-coin dynamic that Ripley and Newt had in the films, but was ruined entirely by the two of them suddenly having sex dreams about each other

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I so wanted to enjoy these books. I really did, actually, up until the third instalment. Each box was different and interesting enough to keep my attention, and I enjoyed reading the expanded stories of Not-Hicks and Not-Newt as they continued their struggle against he alien menace. But that third book was just too much. The author forgot about acid blood. The characters had insane plot armour, and they made such stupid decisions that should have gotten them killed by any number of events. I was totally taken out of the story, and the Big Finale was just ruined. Such a shame that the series as a whole was fairly good (maybe four stars), but that last story was just so poorly realised.

[Ella De · Rating 2 out of 5]

This feels like bad fan fiction.
Some of the ideas are really good and interesting, like the further exploration of the different types of androides or the religious cult forming around the Xenos. But the author seems more interested in soap operalike ships and writing crude sexual fantasies than in exploring this ideas or writing about Xenomorphs at all.
Bad dialogue,one dimensional characters and way too less Xeno scenes.
And you can clearly recognize the original characters and events from the Alien movies that the author ripped off for this.
There are way better novels in the Xeno universe this isn't really worth wasting time on.

[Sean Eckart · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the first book in this series -Earth Hive. I will have to come back for the next two, maybe. I enjoyed the beginning of the book for about the first hundred pages or so,then when the action really picked up the whole thing bombed. I'm a huge fan of the franchise and was really excited to read these books after looking at some reviews. I don't want to give anything away for those who might be interested. 2 fun twists in the end! If you like the movies this is a fun read that maybe need a bit more development.

[Jorge Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novelisation of a comic book story written after the events of Aliens which originally was following Newt and Hicks, then they changed their names cos more films came out and continuity didn't make sense but they were still basically the same characters. The space-jockeys (engineers) turn up but this is written before Prometheus came out so they appear as big elephant trunked bipeds as if the flight suits are part of their physiology.
Anyhoo, it's fun for what it is. Not Canon by the way haha

[QEDS · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hned na začátku veliké plus za zasazení Ripleyové do příběhu a hned menší mínus za napětí, které bylo jen v určitých pasážích. U knih z řad Vetřelce jsem zvyklý na napětí, které se dá krájet nejpozději po první třetině knihy a minimálně do konce knihy. U knihy jsem se jinak bavil a celkem mě zajímalo jak to vlastně celé dopadne. Pár lidí o této knize napsalo, že děj je předvídatelný (no jasně když už máte knihu dočtenou tak se vám to tak jeví), ale autoři nechávali tu a tam šikovně pootevřené dvířka díky kterým jsem si nebyl vždy na 100 % jistý že se bude děj ubírat právě daným směrem autorů.

[Shane Kaler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went into this thinking the stories herein were relatively autonomous in-universe… a bit disappointed at first, but I came to really enjoy the adventures of Wilks and Billie. Overall a worthwhile father/daughter collab; however the former imbued it with an ill-fitted sexual motif, while the latter totally shirks canonically key details (namely the destructive power of alien blood as well as the toughness of their hides). Also, can we stop making android identities/abilities the twist of these things?!