Alita: Savaş Meleği - Demir Kent

by Pat Cadigan, Seda Çıngay Mellor (Translator)

OLAY YARATAN BİLİMKURGU FİLMİ
ALITA: SAVAŞ MELEĞİ’ NİN ÖN HİKÂYESİ.

Büyük Savaş çok uzun zaman önce yaşandı. Savaşın sebepleri zamanla unutulup gitti. Harap olmuş Dünya yüzeyinde, uçan gökyüzü kentinde yaşayanların atılan çöplerinin arasında bir metropol yükseldi. Demir Kent'e hoş geldiniz.

Siborgları tamir etmekte uzman Ido adında yalnız bir doktor, Demir Kent sakinlerine yardım etmek için elinden geleni yapar. Ama Ido’nun ikinci bir hayatı daha vardır, kırılan kalbinin parçalarından doğan başka bir kişilik.

Suç dolu bir yaşamdan kurtulmayı başarmış Hugo adında genç bir adam, gözünü son bir vurguna diker: Kendi geçmişinden sırları çözecek bir nesneye.
Ve şehrin en güçlü işinsanı Vector, Demir Kent'in geleceğini sonsuza dek değiştirecek yepyeni bir teknolojiye odaklanır…

Genres: Science Fiction, Audiobook, Fiction, Fantasy, Cyberpunk, Action, Science Fiction Fantasy

328 pages, Paperback

Published February 18, 2019

About the author

Pat Cadigan is an American-born science fiction author, who broke through as a major writer as part of the cyberpunk movement. Her early novels and stories all shared a common theme, exploring the relationship between the human mind and technology.

Her first novel, Mindplayers, introduced what became a common theme to all her works. Her stories blurred the line between reality and perception by making the human mind a real and explorable place. Her second novel, Synners, expanded upon the same theme, and featured a future where direct access to the mind via technology was in fact possible.

She has won a number of awards, including the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award twice,in 1992, and 1995 for her novels Synners and Fools.

She currently lives in London, England with her family.

Reviews

[Montzalee Wittmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alita: Battle Angel - Iron City
by Pat Cadigan
I have read Battle Angel: Alita, and then watched the movie and really liked it. I saw this book and this takes the reader further back in time, all the way back to when the doctor and family lived in the sky city.
Then it tells how they came to the Iron City, how they meet Hugo and Victor, and more. After watching the movie and reading the first book, I really had the world and people in my mind. Great story!

[Jordan Bickimer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fantastic book. As a long-time BAA fan, I've been looking forward to the movie with cautious excitement. When I picked this book up I wasn't sure what to expect. But I am very pleasantly surprised. Pat understands what made the original comic tick, and she obviously knows and loves the characters. Things have been changed, of course. That happens with adaptations. But at least with this prequel novel, the beating heart that made BAA what it was is still present.

I especially enjoy how she handled Ido. He feels even more fleshed out and grounded than he was in the comics, and that's no small feat. The changes to his back story actually feel quite fitting for him.

The other characters all shine as well. Some are repurposed from the comic, some are new. But they all feel alive in Cadigan's hands, as does Iron City (which will always be the Scrapyard to me). The city feels alive and grimy as it should.

All in all, I really enjoyed this, and it has me a bit more hopeful for the movie. If nothing else, I'll be reading Pat's novelization, and checking out some of her other works.

[Lacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook. After watching the movie Alita recently, I'm curious about her universe so I thought I would check out the books (not the comics). It was cool learning some of the character's backstories but we still don't find out why Zolem is so special in this particular dystopian universe.

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I excitedly picked up all the novels related to this series because I’ve been a fan of it for more than 20 years. However, obviously the movie deviates from the manga in several key respects. This particular novel is a prequel which could’ve had a lot of potential in dealing with the backstories of the characters. However, there’s a lot of focus on the characters of Hugo and Charin, who in the grand scheme of things are really minor and fleeting characters in this series. Even still, there could’ve been a lot of backstory and detail in the world revealed in this novel, but unfortunately due to the lackluster writing, and apparently the control of information, there’s not really a lot revealed in the background. Instead we have at most a minor adventure of these characters, along with Ido, in a book that ultimately could be skipped entirely.

[Lacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book after watching the movie. It's written in 3rd person omniscient which let's you into the minds and motives of key characters in the film. You'd only like this book if you really liked the movie.

[Ida Wilcox · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw the movie Alita Battle Angel and I was very interested in the back story.

Hopefully they will make this back story into a film as well.

[Tony Fecteau · Rating 4 out of 5]

The movie was absolutely incredible. This audio book adds on to your knowledge of the characters pre-Alita, and lets you know how rough life is in the Iron City. I really enjoyed the story as it fleshed out the characters.

[Dawie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty decent prequel, even though one of the characters from the movie adaption got more page time than what I cared for. No actual Alita features in this one. But adds a little more depth to the setting that the main book is set in.

[Jaq Greenspon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn’t a bad book. It was nicely written. I just didn’t get *why* it was written. Yes, we got some background into the characters of the film, but not Alita herself. And nothing that wasn’t really explained in the film. There just didn’t seem to be a point to this book.

[James McIntosh Jr.]

Let me start by saying I loved the movie so much when I watched it. I even bought it and want to watch it again.

However, I only got a few chapters into this book when I borrowed it from the library. At first I thought it was a very interesting expansion on the story, with deeper insights and more information about the world and the characters. However, it was not as exciting or interesting as the movie, and it quickly became vulgar and even sexual. It was ruining the characters and experience for me, and I don't want to get too deep into something like that. I was thinking about reading more to see if it gets better again, but I don't want to risk it, and I have too many other things in my pile of books to read that probably won't be such a waste of time.

[Kipling Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very useful prequel to the amazing best movie I have seen this year. Not having read the original manga, I had a number of questions about the various characters and their backgrounds, and this book served that purpose excellently. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Brian Nishii. I very much enjoyed his accent, which sounded similar to that of Christoph Waltz in the movie, well suited to the ethnic melting pot of Iron City. I was surprised by the differences in the pronunciation of names between the audiobooks and the movie. A happier sound was Chiren pronounced CHEE-ren in the audiobook and sha-RENN in the movie; an unusual name and I founn the former more exotic. Less felicitous was McTeague which was prounounced mukh-TEEG in the movie, the usual pronunciation for this name, yet repeatedly pronounced mukh-TIGG-you in the audiobook.
Tha said, this is a very helpful adaption of the original manga so that those who have questions after watching the movie like "Why didn't anyone follow Alita into the ruined cathedral?" will find answers along with ample backstories for Dr. Ido, Chiren, Nurse Gerhad, and Hugo.

I enjoyed this book so much, I just finished listening to it a second time. Recommended!

[George Zverblis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good, sets up the characters and the world really well. Looking forward to seeing the film!

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a Battle Angel Alita fan, I clearly have a high tolerance for ridiculous worldbuilding, plots that go upside-down and sideways, and dialog that alternates between cringeworthy and confuzzling.

But Pat Cadigan tried to take all that and put it in a novel, and it just doesn't work.

James Cameron's movie Alita: Battle Angel was supposed to be the first in a franchise, as he planned to film the entire Alita saga. Unfortunately, the movie tanked badly enough that we'll probably never see another one, but before then they apparently hired Pat Cadigan to write at least two tie-in novels.

I very rarely read movie novelizations, but like I said, I'm an Alita fan. Cadigan's first Alita book was just a straight novelization of the movie, and it was serviceable enough. Iron City is a "prequel" to the movie, containing material from the manga that probably would never have been filmed even if the franchise had continued because it all takes place before Alita shows up. Cadigan does what she can with the stories of Doc Ido, his ex-wife Chiren, Alita's future boyfriend Hugo, and Vector, the boss/fixer of Iron City, but these are all secondary characters who frankly aren't all that interesting by themselves. We care about Ido and Hugo because Alita cares about them. Chiren never appeared in the manga and was just an excuse to add Jennifer Connelly to the movie, and Vector is an antagonist before Alita moves on to bigger and badder villains.



So, if you've read the manga, this book doesn't fill in much of anything for you. If you really liked the movie and haven't read the manga, maybe you'll enjoy this book as it gives you more detail about the characters in the movie. But I just found it rather tedious.

Admittedly, it was not helped by Cadigan's writing. In the first Alita book, I could forgive the flat narrative voice and the exposition dumps because it was a movie novelization, after all. In this book, though, she's taking a story given to her by Yukito Kishiro (and Hollywood) but she had the freedom to put her own voice in it, and her own voice is, well, flat and full of exposition dumps. Page after page of telling us what Ido feels and why, describing Chiren as a walking manifestation of Resting Bitch Face, and of course, Vector, who's a cartoonish bad guy who didn't need to be quite so cartoonish in print, but Cadigan still writes him that way. Not only narrating his every thought in third person, but making him constantly such a petty, shitty employer that it's a wonder no one has shived him yet.



(In the manga, he eventually becomes slightly more sympathetic, though he's still a dick.)

Anyway, while this book wasn't terrible, I can't really recommend it. Read the manga instead. Given these two entries, I'm not really sad that Cadigan didn't get to write any more books in the franchise.

[Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the original Battle Angel Alita manga and anime when I experienced both 20 years ago. They were some of the original materials that pulled into manga and anime. So I am excited yet trepidatious about an American live action movie, but I will see it nonetheless. I randomly discovered this prequel novel at my local library. Since I enjoy delving into my favorite movie's novelizations (most recently the new Star Wars films) I snapped up this prequel, figuring it would also give me a leg up on the movie's interpretation of my beloved story.

The novel certainly introduces the main characters, sans Alita herself. Dr. Dyson Ido is the cyber-surgeon by day and Hunter-Warrior by night. Chiren is Ido's estranged wife and similarly skilled cyber-surgeon. Hugo is a street kid with aspirations of rising above the street. And Vector presides over Iron city by dint of his connections with the floating city of Zalem. There's a bunch of backstory provided for each character but I have to think the necessary bits will have to be included in the movie for the movie itself to make any sense. Hugo's past might not be key to a plot focused on Alita, but Ido's past leading to his potential reasons for assembling Alita are something that will have to be explored. It did feel a bit repetitious at times to go over the same characteristics but it also helped to drive home their eventual motivations in the movie.

This is truly a prequel in that it's mean to be read prior to the proper first entry. Most prequels are done after the fact and thus have the advantage of the audience already being familiar with the characters and setting. This novel appears to be purely setting up the characters and setting so you are familiar with them prior to seeing the movie. Given I already still had recollections of Ido, Hugo, and Vector (to be honest I had forgotten Chiren) this wasn't of much use to me.

The plot itself serves mostly to establish the world of cybernetics, Total Replacements (people who have had their entire body replaced by robotic parts), and the post apocalyptic symbiosis of the floating city Zalem and its trash can Iron City. Outside of particular events in Ido's past and Hugo's past it was hard to form any real emotional attachment to any character. Even the strained relationship between Ido and Chiren didn't stir up much besides frustration at Chiren's calculating attitude (and the lame attempts at sexualizing her).

I mentioned to a friend that while I enjoyed reading the book, each time I set it down I was disappointed to see how few pages had passed. That's never a good sign.

[erebus K Rushworth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a novelised prequel to a film I have seen so I wasn't going in completely blind.

As always I'm thankful for the narrator (Brian Nishii) having a clue about how to pronounce Japanese names. Too many audiobook producers don't seem to care about or notice this sort of thing, but it's a trend that seems to be slowly righting itself, as Audiobooks become more popular.

I feel like this content straddles a line of "written for young people" and "content for science fiction fans and anime/manga fans". As a science fiction model it doesn't flesh the world out much. We get the same enclosed, bottom-looking-up view of the world as you do in other things like Maze Runner, Divergent and Hunger Games... a sort of "potted world". This isn't always bad, but you'd hope that it would give more scope for fleshing out the characters and actually describing some of the differences of the world.

I guess that, because it's a novelisation, a lot of the look and feel of the places is left out of the book because they expect that you will have watched the movie, but I like for my books to be the deluxe version... a chance to get more detail. This is really a lot more plot driven than thematic, or character driven. Hugo feels like a cardboard cut-out, and even his internal conflicts seem lacking in nuance.

It's... OK. There don't seem to be any huge gaping holes, except for in the hearts of the characters... and that's part of the point I guess.

[Kasia | Zapisana w Książkach · Rating 2 out of 5]

Miasto Złomu to wprowadzenie do świata z filmu Alita. Battle Angel. Prequel został stworzony przez Pat Cadigan, a w Polsce wydany przez wydawnictwo Insignis.

Zdecydowanie nie jest to najciekawsza książka, jaką czytałam, jednak nie jest też najgorsza. Z całą pewnością jest to pozycja, z którą należałoby się zapoznać po obejrzeniu filmu, wbrew zasadom chronologii akcji. Chociaż brak w niej wyraźnych nawiązań do historii Ality, czytelnik wprowadzany jest do świata Miasta Złomu bytującego w cieniu Zalemu oraz kilku jego mieszkańców.

Fabularnie książka nie jest mocno rozwinięta, skupia się bardziej na charakterystyce bohaterów, przedstawiając ich motywacje oraz wprowadzając przeszłość. Niestety, robi to dość chaotycznie, z wielką ilością retrospekcji, w których momentami może być trudno się połapać. Wszyscy przedstawieni bohaterowie są ze sobą powiązani i przeplatają się przez swoje historie. Jednak jeśli ktoś szukał genezy filmowej bohaterki, tutaj jej nie znajdzie.

Jak na science-fiction, ta historia napisana jest zadziwiająco prosto. Językowo nie porywa, choć z pewnością jest łatwa do czytania, przez co szybko idzie się przez nią przebić. Ma w sobie także kilka ciekawych dylematów etycznych, co trochę urozmaica lekturę, jednak nie stanowi głównego skupienia powieści.

Miasto Złomu to książka, która nie stanowi wyzwania czytelniczego nawet dla osób, które nie są obeznane z literaturą sci-fi. Myślę jednak, że bez znajomości filmu i pewnej dozy sympatii do bohaterów, powieść może okazać się nudna, monotonna oraz nijaka, zwłaszcza że fabuła pasowałaby bardziej na opowiadanie niż powieść.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alita: Battle Angel - Iron City
The Official Movie Prequel
By: Pat Cadigan
Narrated by: Brian Nishii
Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
Audiobook
Pat Cadigan has made an elaborate and compelling story to support the Alita film. Her beautifully constructed world of Iron City, with is criminals, junk, and hardship brings the idea of motorball, and the life of Dr, Dyson Ido in a creative and inspiring story. The struggles of Hugo, Ido, Chiren create a world that Alita falls into. Their personal struggles with criminals, crimes, and violence connected to the motor ball industry show the nature of human in is darkest nature. The personal struggles, heroic attempts, and the ideas that Ido brings from Zalem to Iron city. The book would be inspiring for young students as the Manga was to the graphic novels were. The characters were remarkable in the ability connect to the reader.
Brian Nishii is a great narrator his reading gives life to the book, the characters having different desires shown in his tone.

[Meghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t realize this was a prequel but right from the beginning it felt familiar. I was a little put off by the narrator for the first part of the story. I felt his cadence and tone was not helpful to a plodding introduction. But then the story picked up and I enjoyed him a lot more. So I think it’s less the narrator and more the story. The last 2/3 of the story felt like the Netflix adaptation. It filled in some blanks as to the people and why they did what they did. But it really didn’t illuminate. It was just set up for the main Alita story. But it entertained me so it’s fine. If you liked the show, you’d probably like this story. It made me want to rewatch the show. But I wouldn’t say you could read this first and be super thrilled by it. It definitely helps if you’re familiar with this world and the characters.

[drowningmermaid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, so I'm a long-time Alita fan, and I like the movie, too. And this is the kind of thing that I love, in all its fanficcy glory.

HOWEVER, it IS suuuuper repetitive. And there's really nothing in here that wasn't covered in the movie. Zip. Nada. Maybe one cool extra character who's probably going to show again in a sequel movie. And the backstory is not as good as the one Kishiro came up with-- you know, the short where Ido actually learns to work on cyborgs (which they naturally don't have up in Tieresias.)

There's some evidence of authorial time crunch-- weird modernisms thrown in in places that don't make sense, and some signs that the writer's mind is wandering while working. Happens to the best of us with 80K to write in two weeks.

Anyway, I liked it.

[Jeff Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fleshes out the backstory outlined in the film — fairly similar to the manga source material — with focus on the lives of Ido, Chiren, Hugo, and Vector prior to Alita’s arrival. Some additional mentions of Nova as well which is exciting.

Not exactly an essential read, though. The extra detail being filled in is nice, but nothing really consequential happens. Which, I suppose, is expected, being a prequel.

I’ll always be here for more Battle Angel content though. I continue to hope for 2–3 more Alita films, instead of six more Avatar films or whatever Cameron has planned.

[Ulisses Domingues · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apesar de fornecer uma boa história a duas das personagens, e apesar de adorar tanto a mangá como o filme, tudo o resto cai um pouco por terra. Valerá a pena ler para os fãs da obra cinematográfica, mas pouco mais do que isso.

[Sinclair Myhre · Rating 1 out of 5]

For marketing reasons I understand why it’s named “Alita Battle Angel…” but in reality this is a very misleading title. It’s plot is missing any of the excellent action sequences or optimistically engaging characters in the original movie novelization.

This is not the prequel I was looking for.

[Mathew Benham · Rating 2 out of 5]

A 9hr audio book. A lot of this book kept making me think 'Why are they only focused on living in iron city?' The author does not go into detail of it but I dont understand why the people stick around in the dump heap city when you can leave and start a new city far from the slavery.

[Mohamed Zaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have watched Alita Battle Angel movie but now only I know that there's a prequel book for this movie which focuses on the lives of Dr Dyson Ido, Chiren, Vector, Hugo and more before the creation of the titular Alita......hope the movie is made based on this book.....

[Rich Meyrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice character development ahead of the movie (I presume), but the story doesn't really progress that much.

[Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm quite suspicious of novelisation of manga stories, even moreso of European cooption, but I do like Pat Cadigan. This was not bad.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this prequel to the movie. Great characters and story. Looking forward to all future Alita stories.

[Ryan Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good prequel, although I hoped for a little more in Zalem, the last sky city.

[Indah Threez Lestari · Rating 3 out of 5]

265 - 2020

[Donald Scoby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, plays nicely into the film.