I really wanted to like this book more. I’ve been fascinated with the Xenomorphs for quite a while now, and I purchased this around the time Prometheus was released. Interestingly enough, the Engineers actually do feature here, although I am unable to discern as yet how everything fits together. That’s tie-in fiction for you. Earth Hive was released in the early 1990s and is book 1 in the Aliens series, but details about Xenomorph behaviour, biology and society is so sparse, and treated so perip...

This was actually remarkably good for what it is. The plot is incredibly compelling and the characters are very well written. I honestly greatly enjoyed this book and am going to seek out others in the series.

Adaptation of the first Aliens series from Dark Horse Comics (1988-89) by Mark Verheiden and art by Mark A. Nelson, which was a continuation of James Cameron's movie and starred Newt and Hicks. This novel came out 2 months after the movie Alien³, and thus the names of the main characters had to be changed to Billie and Wilks (and LV-426 changed to Rim) since we then knew Newt and Hicks died on Fiorina 161. This creates a weird parallel: Newt's and Billie's backstories are almost identical: both

The writing is pretty flaccid and straightforward. The story is mostly split between two narrative threads, one of which is interesting. Intelligence agents, scientists, corporate interests, and a cult, all of which are fixated on the alien for different reasons, makes for interesting reading. The idea that the alien invades people's dreams or calls out to them relates to some fascinating psychological areas.Unfortunately, the bulk of the story is really about a marine and a young woman survivor...

A semi entertaining side story to the Alien franchise.

He, he, he stupid humans. Here we go again. The smartest race in the universe, colonisation, interstellar travel and what not, only to have our bottoms kicked by a predatory species with no natural or otherwise enemies in the food chain. I guess it’s our natural human cockiness that makes us assume the stupidity of any other species in the galaxy. Aliens turn out to be fast learners, unburdened by any sort of morality (a feature of the greatest it would seem), only driven by survival instinct. A...

Not my first “Perry” novelization, so wasn’t really expecting to have my socks blown off, but this still managed to kinda disappoint. With such a strong franchise providing fertile ground to plough, there should be no need for rehashing bits from movies (both from within the franchise and outside) or creating awkwardly spliced in love stories. The best bits of the novel, in fact, came in the parts outside the main “mission” storyline, presented mainly as more-or-less background exposition and (I...

I bought this book for a dollar, and only did so because I had just watched Prometheus and was looking for something that might keep with that flavor. I honestly had no idea that there were even books for this cannon of films but was curious enough to purchase it, knowing that it might be completely crap (as most based on the films books are). I must say, however, that I was pleasantly surprised with the book and was able to both read and enjoy the novel from start to finish. For those who dont

So, this book starts off with two dream sequences. One would have been bad enough, but in order to introduce the two main characters, Newt Billie and Hicks Wilks, Perry puts us through two dream sequences to bring us up to speed. It's a cheap method for character development, though, to be fair, Aliens had one, too.Earth Hive has a lot of other throwbacks to Aliens, including but not limited to:--a scene where Wilks shows Billie how to use his weapons;--"asses and elbows" is used once;--"It's th...

A 3.5 is probably closer to what I would score this book. I rounded up "just because" It's a fun read that doesn't try to be GREAT LITERATURE and that's okay. It served the purpose of continuing the story after Aliens while ignoring the later films.. Better than the flawed Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection.

This was a great Aliens novel. While the first two movies were classics, this novel was better than any of the movies that came after the first two.A derelict ship is found in Earth orbit, and an alien is onboard. The ships black box shows a way back to what is probably the Aliens homeworld. Of course the government sees "bioweapon" all over the alien and sets off to the homeworld. The problem is, Weyland Yutani already has an alien specimen on Earth, and they want to be the only ones to have it...

"Before those two Coast Guard clowns blew themselves up, they downloaded the derelict's data banks. We have a trajectory of that old ship. We know where it came from before it came home to die.""Ask me if I care.""Oh, you should, Corporal. You're going there. Whatever your problems are don't matter. I need a specimen of the thing the Coast Guard found. You're going to bring me one.""I won't volunteer for it.""Oh, but you will." Orona grinned. If they wanted you, they would get you, he'd been in

Fair warning, I am quite a fan boi of Aliens and Predators as a whole. Even a "mediocre" Alien/Predator movie to critics I will most likely think is better than most other movies out at the time. Same line of thinking for me applies to the books. I'm a simple man, I love Aliens and I love Predator franchises, not saying they can do no wrong but I love them for what they are. That said, my rating somewhat reflects this, as a whole the story is a 3 star affair if you are not in love with the franc...

I would love to rate this higher but current day me is not middle school me. This is an adaptation of Mark Verheiden's first volume of the Aliens comic series released in 1989. While the comic was initially an sequel to Aliens this novel, released of in conjunction with Alien 3, meant the characters names had to be changed (Wilks = Hicks, Billie = Newt). The plot is fine and the characterization is thin; the relations between Billie and Mitch (a colonial marine) in particular stands out as devel...

So I read this book in under 24 hours because I found it to be such a page turner. I'm hesitant to rate this book five stars because I worry people will start to assume that I'm not frugal enough with my ratings, that I just give four or five stars to anything with passing quality(not that anybody actually reads the reviews I leave). I can see someone thinking, why does this deserve five stars? I mean, this is just a cheap sci-fi story, right? It's not some literary masterpiece that captures the...

Reading all the Aliens comics I could find eventually lead me to the novelizations, which I didn't realize was a thing at first. I want to say, I think I found a copy of this book at Walden Books at my local mall and I remember being super excited about it. The first time I read this book was, I believe, I was in 7th grade. I also recall finding the book rather confusing and not even remotely being aware of what this novel was based on... so, in retrospect, now that I know what was really going

Bit slow to begin, charecter building and such, but becomes a proper page turner mid way in.

I discovered the existence of this book series thanks to browsing some pages on the Alien & Predator wiki -- which meant getting spoiled for a major twist in this book, but still #noregrets, because it led me to picking these up in the first place. BEWARE, FOR I AM GOING TO NERD OUT A LOT IN THIS REVIEW, I love this franchise so much!This is, no exaggeration, the story that should have been Alien 3. It's perfectly in the spirit of the movie series: slow, creeping horror; mouthy marines and badas...

This is my second, maybe third time reading this book. I have read Perry's work in the past, and often enjoyed it. When I got a chance to go back to this novel I leapt at the chance, as I had fond memories of reading it when I was younger.Reading this book now... it's good, but not amazing. Perry does a good job bringing together a number of elements of the Alien's world, which helps to craft the eventual end of the book. He bounces between quiet a few characters and does it in such a way you ar...

Aliens Novels: Book 1, Earth Hive / 0-553-56120-0I'm a die-hard fan of the Aliens movies, so it seemed natural to branch out a bit and check out the novel series that was written based off of the film and comic franchise. "Earth Hive" being the first book, I dived in with relish, fully expecting, however, that the end results would be pretty poor. I was pleasantly surprised to find that was not the case.Wilks and Billie are the sole survivors of an alien infestation on a remote colonized world,