Poor performance

Spoken quickly with odd gaps in narration. Monotonous voice made it hard to listen to and get into the stories

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Great addition to the series

Very enjoyable with interesting social dynamics in the face of the xenomorph threat. Focuses less on the machinations of the mega corps and more on the struggles of people

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somewhat interesting.

decent story, narrator was not to my overall liking but was responsible giving a B+

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Good characters, good narrator

A good story with the usual alien tropes. This one had some funny references in it I enjoyed. A lot of references in this and others(Bishop) to Australia and New Zealand. If you are playing the rpg then this story bares some similarities to CMOM mission 6.

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Brilliant story, decent narration

I loved this story. The plot is true to the franchise, the characters are well-written and the conclusion hints at much more to come. The story leans into several Alien tropes but doesn't rely upon them, a delicate balance between homage and originality. As an Antipodean I was immensely pleased to hear Australians and New Zealanders written with respect rather than treated as living caricatures, something with which writers of other nations seem to struggle. My issues with this audiobook are exclusively about the narration, which is of reasonable quality but falls apart in some areas. In particular the main characters all have NZ and AU accents, but Julienne Irons doesn't even attempt them. This is better than doing them badly, certainly, but it would have been more appropriate, given the sheer proliferation of those accents, to find NZ or AU voice talent. In addition there are several examples of mispronounced words (not just regional variations), such as 'loping' close to the end of the book pronounced as 'lopping.' Still, this doesn't ruin enjoyment of the tale: this book was a pleasure to listen to and I heartily recommend it to any fan of the franchise. Kudos!

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1 person found this helpful

Below fan-fiction

The narrator delivers an admirable effort to elevate this novel, but personally I think it's unsalvageable.
The characters are two-dimensional and wholey unlikeable. The story draws very little from the source material, while adding nothing to the over-arching cannon. It was a miserable slog, and with 6 hours left, I called it quits.

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1 person found this helpful

More of the same but the narration was next level

As far as the story goes, take a bunch of scenes from other books/movies/comics and put them in a timeline that makes sense. I did enjoy the opening for a sequel though.

It was the narrator that killed it for me. After about 20 chapters I managed to get past the news reader tone and cadence. Take all the words with a ‘T’ in the middle and say them without pronouncing the letter T. Fri’end (frightened), de’onader (detonator), sir’en (certain). Then you get couldn’t, shouldn’t, didn’t, wouldn’t etc and say them without pronouncing the ‘D’ in the middle. I heard her say ecscape (escape) a few times. She read dawdle as ‘dwaddle’ and I’m pretty sure a heard weapontry (weaponry) on a couple of occasions……from a supposed professional reader. Gave up on this audiobook a couple of times but battled through to the end eventually.

Wish I bought the paperback instead.

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Has dei in it which ruins the setting

Dei junk is political and has no place in a book and ruins the story while also taking away from the story and the universe of the setting river of pain and bug hunt are what these books should be story and setting make a good book and to try and jump away form something that works and has a fan base like these new books colony wars aren’t as rich in setting they don’t suck you in and they do are mention of skin or race or even gender break the the spell are story Gose from horror to being too close to the problems of the real world and it takes so much form a horror and survival to something that is to close to that trying to throw something at you and it breaks the story

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WOKE

I found the plot boring. The characters underwealming. Action is action, but when people die and you don't give a care...you know the mark has been missed.

Every woke narritive was in there.
Feminism aka men bad women good. Racism. Anti-capitalism. LGBTQ. Main characters were all "people of colour". I can tell you the authors real life political opinions on pretty much everything.

There has been plenty Woke in other Alien novels.

Cold forge. My favourite. Had a lesbian black main character, Blue. And a white capitalist sociopath bad guy, Dorian. The characters were so well written it was fine. Slight political and social tones hinted too, but the original Alien had a strong female lead Ripley and bashing of extreme capitalism prizing money over human life. So it felt fine.

This however, like most things these days. Has just tipped the balance too far.

Having a Android speaking to a "Trans person" and contemplating how they could understand how it feels to be in the wrong body.....damn. I laughed at that one.

Yeah this one was far too woke for me. Took me out of the story a lot with many little plot points stuffed in to pander to certain ideologies. Rather than to make good characters.

So if you lean left and you want a dose of wokeness with some Alien franchise overtones this is for you.

If not. Go listen to Cold forge or Charibdis, better characters and plot.

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3 people found this helpful

Worst one

Zero to little suspense, one dimensional woke characters, boring plodding plot, hackneyed themes and not well written.

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