Alien: The Cold Forge by Alex White
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Let's put this book into context, shall we? I didn't expect too much because it is, after all, a horror in an SF setting just like the movies. We have a cross between Alien 3 and Alien 4 without so much of the goofy, with Weyland corp still being the bad guy, and very few actually likable characters.

Stir, mix, let steep in some xenomorph stew, wait for the stupid humans to do something nasty, perverse, and generally unlikable. *Hello, efficiency expert in a top secret lab!*

And then let things get out of control.

Honesty here: I was pretty bored by the formula leading up to the alien breakouts, with a slight exception to Blue, who suffers from a massive degenerative disease and who also uses (or abuses) a synth. Maybe I wanted something rather more ... original ... before everything went to hell. One thing I can say about the newer canonical movies is that they broke new ground even if they kinda broke the cannon (and some credulity).

But, in the end, I did end up enjoying the human monster twists, the glorified horror, and the bloodshed. Should anyone expect anything more from movie-universe tie-ins? Maybe not.

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