![]() ![]() At the same time author Barnett doesn’t forget about barely tapped nuances of the other side of the Alien coin: the Xenomorphs, those villainous monsters of the franchise. And of course when you think of imperialism this is absolutely the most British Alien story yet (a few places include some phrases that may puzzle American readers, but they don’t get in the way of the story). The author uses Cher as the audience representative, getting educated on Weyland-Yutani and the Xenomorph development stages, so the book also might be the easiest jumping-on point for any of the novels.Ī United Kingdom colony in space called New Albion breaks from the Three World Empire, igniting the current crisis of colonial politics. Hunt’s sister Cheyenne aka Shy was killed on a planet that becomes the centerpiece of this story, LV-187, and so she’s the best candidate to try to learn why, and she does dig up surprising schemes. The duo wants to bring Weyland-Yutani’s immoral, unethical, and dangerous experiments with Xenomorphs to the public’s attention, and so they tap a journalist on Earth named Cherokee aka Cher Hunt to take her to see the monsters firsthand. Together their banter gives this new Alien world a gravitas similar to that of Blade Runner and its Replicants, something beyond the Synthetics of the Alien movies. Davis is comfortable as a dog, but speaks and acts human, striving like many a cyborg to transform one day from Pinocchio status to that of a real boy (or here, a man). Chad and Davis the Dog are straight out of Charlie Fletcher’s A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World (later made into the 1975 film A Boy and His Dog). Readers catch up with him after he acquires the disembodied artificial intelligence program of a former security drone named Davis, who is later put into a synthetic dog. McLaren is one of the leads of Alien: Colony War, years after his wife was put into cryofreeze in the hopes he can one day save her from cancer. Fleshed out in the Alien: Isolation video game from 2019, her backstory includes a marriage to Chad McLaren, a former biomedical scientist at Weyland-Yutani, now whistleblower. It all started with Ellen Ripley’s daughter Amanda, who moviegoers first learned of in the movie Aliens (don’t confuse her with the girl named Newt). That’s a pretty good mix for an Alien adventure.Įach of the heroes of this tale is wanted by Weyland-Yutani. It has the suspense of Into Thin Air, the pacing of Jurassic Park, the layered plight of cyborgs from the Humans TV series, and dips back into science fiction’s past with a dose of Forbidden Planet. ![]() Writer David Barnett taps into surprising tropes as he weaves into the bigger Alien narrative stories from the comics and video games. In the running for the most action-packed story in the series, it also covers a lot of territory, merging political intrigue with personal trials and one of the best examinations of its cybernetic Synthetic characters yet. The Alien universe makes a major shift in storytelling in its latest novel, Alien: Colony War, realizing the long-standing promise of Weyland-Yutani, the most hated corporation in sci-fi, finally weaponizing Xenomorphs for an all-out interplanetary war.
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