Steven Kok

Worst Alien novel ever written

Revisado: 01-19-22

The entire setup of this novel seems like an attempt on the author's part to ingratiate himself to a particular group of people. Every hero is a woman. Every man is diminutive, emotionally bereft or a raging aggressive sex fiend. The only man our soldier hero can trust isn't a real man - he's an android. The only instance of spousal abuse, that of a woman punching her much shorter and skinnier husband, is hand-wave forgiven because sometimes people just do things when they're stressed out.

The only man with any power in this entire novel, Dr. Gagnon, has less empathy than his android assistant, because of course he does. And he's an evil biotech scientist, because of course he is. Science is scary, yo!

At one point a character internally describes the alien as "almost biomechanical." Does the author know nothing whatsoever about HR Giger? Or is this supposed to be some sort of weird tribute? It's so on-the-nose I almost lost my mind.

And the author obviously doesn't understand what a vaccine is, because several moments present characters attempting to give a vaccine to the necromorph (cringe doesn't even BEGIN to describe it) and humans who have already contracted the disease the vaccine helps protect against...? That's not how vaccine's work.

So, there's this alien, right? And it's not only scary because of all of the reasons that aliens are scary, but it also spreads the plague, which is also scary! And it's called a necromorph {death metal screaming} because that's scary!

The necromorph, because of its infection apparently feels a need to spread infection. And this causes some sort of conflict with the alien instinct to multiply. But viruses have no concept of their causing illness, that would indicate that they're actively evil. We are aware that like the alien, viruses only have an instinct to multiply. So, where's the conflict?

This "cellular necrotic" disease acts SO fast that within a scant few seconds the body is able to form hideous boils (a response to bacterial infection, not viral). Does the author not know that the human body creates boils, not the diseases the body is responding to? It even causes corpses to develop these nasty symptoms! So apparently it momentarily brings them back to life just long enough for the corpse to create boils before dying again.

That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

All of this scam artist biology apparently also makes the necromorph invulnerable to pulse rifles, the staple of alien eradication since 1986. Because of course it does. I mean, why wouldn't it?

This book is riddled with ridiculous notions like this, and I can only conclude that it was done to try to give the novel an air of sophistication, one I might emphatically add that it lacks entirely.

There's even a wacky video game scene between AI's fighting in cyberspace that actually takes time to unravel for some reason, instead of being nearly instantaneous like even modern computing really is. Maybe the author is a fan of Lawnmower Man or something, either way it was just flat out dumb. This section was stained with cringe, and attributed all kinds of emotional references, indications and insinuations that we've been told time and time again throughout the novel that androids don't have.

Even the narration failed to shed a positive light on this novel. When I first heard her voice I was enthusiastic about the change, as most Alien narrators have been male. Let's be honest: quite a few male narrators make a pretty poor attempt at reading female characters with a lousy falsetto voice. But this narrator's male voice is awful. And they're all the same. Her accents are inconsistent, and when she reads several characters with different accents in the same scene (a questionable decision in the first place) it all just jumbles together in a heap of failure.

Sadly, a lot of dumb things have come out of the Alien franchise since 1979. But this is the dumbest. This is actually the worst.

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Ruined a Good Thing

Revisado: 01-15-22

I really enjoyed #0 and #1 in this series, but this one just fell completely flat. I had similar complaints to other reviewers. Was really irritated by the main character's racist comments about Middle Eastern soldiers and then his following supposed anger about the racism displayed by the book's main adversary. Hypocrisy looks good on no one.

And it just went to weird. Tufo should have stuck with the majority of other zombie writers in keeping the zombies as the most "supernatural" of threats in the world. I was hoping the story would go in a much more survival-oriented direction, but here we are.

It took a while for the descriptions of January in North Dakota to really seem realistic, but I was glad to see that it was eventually shown in a realistic light. As a life-long ND resident I felt that was very important.
But it wasn't enough to redeem this book overall.

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A Diamond or Two in a Lot of Rough

Revisado: 01-15-22

I give kudos to the story outlining the history of the Colonial Marines weapons. It was different, amusing, and extremely well-performed.

And that's about it. The non-xeno bugs were somewhat interesting. But the unrelenting repetition of the most tired of terms and phrases in the whole of the IP grated on my every nerve. One story even uses "shake & bake colony" three times! The term was intended to be a one-off amusing notation, not a proper continuing inclusion in the lexicon.

Lazy writing is the overwhelming trend in most of these stories. Most of the authors seemed incapable of stepping outside the realm of the second movie to give us something actually riveting. Quite unfortunate.

I recommend giving it a listen only if you can do so for free with an Audible membership. Even fans of the USCM will be wasting their money if they pay for it.

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Self Aggrandizement Disguised as Plagiarism

Revisado: 09-18-21

None of this material is original, as the author portrays it. It's just repackaged Chaos Magick. And the author's betters did a far more genuine and enlightening job of it than he did. And all the name dropping the author does to desperately convince the reader that he's worth the money they got ripped off to buy his "book" gets nauseating in record time.

The Narrator did an excellent job, however. Not enough to justify purchasing the product, but he reads it convincingly.

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Is any of it original material?

Revisado: 08-16-21

If you've ever played the tabletop roleplay game Mage: the Ascension, there is no reason to buy this book. The author commits constant intellectual plagiarism from the game throughout in terminology and concepts (as well as from the other White Wolf games here and there).

As an occult enthusiast, I find it vile that this author has simply re-packaged the game to sell to occult enthusiasts for profit.

As a goth for whom the culture isn't merely a phase, I'm revolted by the author's notion of "goth magic" which is little more than a poor re-writing of the Hollow Ones tradition from the game. Two of the spells given in this "book" (Bum a Dollar from the Universe, and Coffee) are taken straight from the game book. There is nothing whatsoever making anything of what he discusses "goth." It's plain to see that being goth was nothing but a phase to the author - a phase he's willing to try to cash in on.

And as an Eagle Scout myself, I'm disappointed that someone else who has achieved that rank would so brazenly trick others for profit.

Chaos magic allows for the use of pop culture notions and images within a magickal context. And it's laudable that White Wolf used real magical ideas to create their game. But laying claim to concepts from a roleplay game that were distributed 16 years before his "Chaos Magick" book, without giving credit to the game when it's due, that's just shameful. Anyone who chooses to include the game in their magickal practice should be aware of where the information is coming from.

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A Rich and Evocative Rendition

Revisado: 04-22-21

This performance of Carmilla is really a treat. It portrayed the balance between erotic and horrific tension admirably. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it.

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A Remarkable Surprise

Revisado: 04-22-21

I wasn't aware of this book until I stumbled upon it in an Audible browsing search. I am an emphatic Alien/s/3/Resurrection fan and while this displaces two of those films, it proves to be an interesting extension from Aliens. Most excellent to hear Lance Henriksen and Michael Biehn! And I feel Laurel Lefkow voiced a very convincing Ripley.

Also a most pleasant surprise was discovering this was authored by William Gibson!

Really great story and performance by all.

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You won't fall asleep

Revisado: 04-22-21

If you're the type of person who likes your esoteric information yelled at you, you will LOVE this book.

The material covered in the book is standard fare for the topic of runes. It's fine, but gives pretty much the exact same information most other introductory guides provide.

The reader seems to think that volume makes a book more convincing. Though her voice isn't necessarily grating or irritating, I wouldn't give it a second listen for the pleasantness of the performance.

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A most excellent introduction

Revisado: 04-22-21

Paxson lives up to her reputation in Essential Asatru with honest perspectives and thorough information that doesn't become tedious and exhaustive. She refers to her own book as an introduction, but it really goes above and beyond that in several parts.

I also found Ann Richardson to be one of the most pleasant narrators I've ever heard. Her voice is lovely and she is extremely conversational - by that I mean that it doesn't sound like she's reading from the page, but instead knows the material well enough to sound perfectly natural.

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Not what I was looking for

Revisado: 12-30-20

I was hoping to get a fairly unbiased explanation of what Islam was about and the history of the religion. But in this book what I got was an angry indictment against what the author assumes is every American's opinion about Muslims.

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