Alien: The Cold Forge Paperback – April 24, 2018

I’m a total sucker for “Alien”-franchise books, and Alien: The Cold Forge, by Alex White, is just the right blend of sci-fi and horror. Dorian Sudler, the director of special resources for Weyland-Yutani, is on his way to a space station to audit them. Dorian loves firing people and finding ways to save money, and he’s already anticipating just how much fun this trip will be. The station is actually being run by a skeleton staff because it’s host to just three projects, all of which are highly secretive. One is Glitter Edifice, which is being run by Dr. Blue Marsalis. She’s supposed to be weaponizing the xenomorphs, but she’s secretly blowing through the face-huggers in an attempt to find a substance they inject into the host bodies that’s capable of rewriting DNA. She has a nasty genetic illness that she won’t survive much longer if she can’t make it work. And if Dorian finds out she’s running her own experiments using the almost priceless, limited supply of xenomorph eggs, he’ll cancel her project and she’ll die in short order. Then, the product of one of the other projects “escapes”–a program that’s built to enter a network and be as destructive as possible–cyber-warfare, basically.Blue and Dorian are the two point-of-view characters and it’s fascinating. Dorian is pretty clearly a psychopath, but not your average psychopath. He makes decisions and takes actions that, once you’ve seen his reasoning, make sense, but are unexpected. Blue is rather self-centered for her part, but I mean, when you’ve been dying for a decade and you’re running out of time to stop it, that makes some sense. And I like the fact that she isn’t perfect and pure.Blue is also a disabled heroine, and that is handled extremely well. She isn’t paralyzed or completely incapable of walking, which is great–almost all media focused on the disabled show that either you need a wheelchair or you don’t, and there’s no partially-mobile middle ground. That depiction has done a lot of harm to disabled people who are capable of standing up and taking a few steps, only to have people around them insist that means they aren’t disabled. Blue needs a lot of medications and a lot of care.Marcus is a synthetic, and he’s Blue’s arms and legs in a sense. Blue can “pilot” Marcus, taking him over entirely, and in that state she’s basically superhuman. But it also damages the relationships she might have had with the crew, leaving them not entirely trusting of her or interested in helping her out. Marcus also handles things like Blue’s meds and the care of her colostomy bag and catheter–the presence of which is, again, handled very well. Blue still has a lot of interaction with the story on her own, not just through Marcus. He isn’t used as a magical escape to make Blue essentially non-disabled, and he’s both a help and a hindrance.The xenomorphs are seen very soon after the book starts–Blue has already hatched quite a few of them. Once Silversmile, the aggressive program, escapes, it’s inevitable that the xenomorphs will somehow escape. At first I thought they were going to entirely elide the how of their escape, because we seem to go straight from them being trapped to them being on the loose. But the story unfolds later in the tale, when our characters are finding out certain secrets.Many of the side characters have interest as well. Some we never find out a lot about, but hey, someone has to die first! And even in the brief interactions with some of them there’s always a touch of personality. The pacing is also top-notch, with plenty of action building up throughout the book. If, like me, you love the combination of sci-fi and horror that the Alien franchise has practically trademarked, then I think you’ll love this book!Content note: abstracted sex scene; blood and gore.

This was a good, quick read that really fits in well with the Alien universe. It fits nicely in the thematic gaps that divide Alien and Aliens and the newer Prometheus and Covenant movies - the survival horror harkens to Alien (and there are many references to Alien: Isolation), while the book also takes the time to touch upon the idea of the black pathogen. There are also references to Walter and David, but the android subplot by no means overwhelms the story.I enjoyed Blue Marsalis as protagonist and would read more books with her in a starring role. She hits a veritable checklist of things not normally seen in the Aliens ‘verse - a woman of color with a disability who has flings with other women and is more comfortable in a male body. She was also cunning and intelligent, and had shades of Ripley’s ingenuity while taking an entirely new path as a sometimes morally ambiguous, science-based protagonist. There are very few ground-pounders in this story.I would’ve liked perhaps fewer convenient flashbacks, less predictable plot twists (housing a destructive AI in the same station as a kennel full of xenomorphs?), and more of a focus on the saboteur subplot, which was practically nonexistent until the last 10%, despite being mentioned in the blurb.Despite some flaws, I have no real complaints. It was a blast to read and I finished it in a day. A solid entry into the extended universe.

Alien: The Cold Forge gets what works about the first three Alien movies (yes, I think Alien 3 has plenty of stuff in it that works), and the Alien: Isolation video game, and continues in the same vein to tell a story about obsession, espionage, and the will to survive. Alex White understands that the scariest monster in this universe is and always has been Man, and goes about showing that the sort of cold, corporate, greed-driven evil represented by Weyland-Yutani and Seegson can also give birth to evils much more intimate and personal.This is not a happy book ... but most of the media set in this world doesn't tell happy stories, even if it sometimes gives you semi-happy endings. Another reviewer compared this book to works like David Fincher's Seven, and Cormac McCarthy's The Road, in terms of tone, and I wouldn't disagree. I happen to like both of those works very much, and I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.I loved this story's protagonist, Blue, because I didn't particularly like her. She's not all that more sympathetic than the primary antagonist (the most sympathetic characters in the book are an android named Marcus and a couple of the secondary Cold Forge workers who are just trying to do their jobs). Crippled by a progressive genetic disease, Blue is bedridden for a large portion of the novel, which sets her up with some extreme difficulties to overcome once things, as they inevitably do in this universe, all go to hell. She uses a combination of wits and will to survive, and I found myself rooting for her despite her negative character traits. She's no Ellen (or Amanda) Ripley, but that's OK ... we've already gotten to know those characters, and don't need them recycled.What I didn't like quite as much was the primary antagonist. I don't think I've ever seen someone quite like Blue in a book before. I've seen people like Dorian, whose ruthless corporate efficiency moves toward sadism and psychopathy in a way that I don't think will surprise many readers. He's still compelling and extremely fun to root against, so I'm not knocking a star off or anything, but I'd liked to have seen just a little bit more in his character that felt new.The writing's great--I think even better than White's first novel, which I also enjoyed--and the pacing is perfect. Everything hums along and keeps you reading until the bitter end. There's enough tech, science, and medicine to keep things feeling grounded without causing your eyes to glaze over, and I thought the descriptions of the Cold Forge itself really helped set the scene.If you're a fan of the universe or just of dark Sci-Fi in general, this one's a strong recommend.

This was a fun read. I recommend it if you're a fan of Aliens.

I love the original film and sequel. This is a good expansion on the series and well worth the read

Facente parte del corso canonico avviato dalla Titan Books nel 2014, il romanzo (interamente in Inglese) rappresenta un'ottima prova per lo scrittore Alex White.PRO:- Storia intricata e ben strutturata, non annoia.- Disponibile anche per l'ascolto, ovviamente sempre in lingua originale, incluso nell'abbonamento Audible.- Prezzo davvero contenuto, sia in formato fisico che Kindle.CONTRO:- Nulla da segnalare, se non una presunta contemporaneità con gli eventi di Aliens, che confermano come la Weyland-Yutani sia già in possesso della preziosa entità biologica aliena.

Outstanding read. This book is a hilarious send up of corporate culture and a great Alien story at the same time. Easily the best Alien novel I've read.

Livro bom. Meio monótono no início, mas é interessante ver a descrição detalhada do lugar e dos personagens. É uma perspectiva futura de Aliens em relação aos filmes. Um caminho de uso dos alienígenas praticamente inevitável, em que fica evidente que a humanidade do então futuro não evoluiu eticamente.

I thought it as comics book of avp series.But it was a novel.Not completed it but it looks somehow interesting.