Rating:

Alien Retold

Author: Ness Brown

There is a ship, suspended in the glittering, perfect stillness of cold space. The captain is incommunicado, locked away in his chambers. The food stores are running low. The colony aboard the ship is returning from their planet, having failed to thrive. They are just hoping that Earth is still there, still a place welcoming return. It’s a desperate effort, and everything is going wrong.

Acting Captain Jacklyn Albright, the daughter of the current captain, is trying her best to make sense of the situation. Meanwhile, her creepy technician’s overly sexualized female android, complete with lifelike breasts, has received portions of a disturbing call from another ship. The message only says, “don’t open the door.” Circuits are failing on the ship. There are weird sounds coming from inside the walls. People are being discovered dead and eaten. The grain stores are depleting way faster than they should.

Ness Brown’s novella, The Scourge Between the Stars, with its utterly gorgeous cover, certainly has potential, but let’s face it, this story is just Alien retold. The main difference is the fast pace, which rapidly goes from haunted-mansion-in-space to shoot em’ up thriller to a “trick” ending, but without the depth of characterization and paranoia resonate in Alien. Choosing to emulate or retell a classic is a dangerous game.

First – it never makes sense why Jacklyn is captain in her father’s stead. Is she trained? Is this purely hereditary? Why is everyone else on this ship just ok with the captain being MIA through this entire disaster? No one asks where he is? No one thinks this is weird? No one asks Jacklyn what makes her qualified? Everyone just goes along with this leap in logic, bad dream fashion?

Then, we have the android, Watson. I’ll skip the “hey, that was from Alien,” bit. This time, the android is with them all along, but the theme is one of objectification and sentience. The creepy tech is clearly having sex with the android, and every time we see Watson, she’s got some new lifelike addition or skimpy outfit. Watson is NOT comfortable with her sexualization, nor with the tech’s personal off-screen “use” of her body. This brings up issues of consent and personhood. . . that are never fully addressed. It’s a huge topic, an important part of the story, and ultimately a major issue that is simply dropped instead of addressed. What was the point of including this side story and giving it so much space? Why take it to 90% and then simply forget it, as though the entire conflict between Watson and her abuser (and those who see and are silent about the abuse) never happened?

Image by Fran Soto from Pixabay

Jacklyn also has a girlfriend, whose name alludes me at this time, and we have a moment where it looks like the romance will impede her judgement (in the traditional “key person risks life and mission and everyone else to save love interest” way.) Now, I’ll save you the rant about how that HAS SO BEEN done. But, again, the romance is there . . . and then just dropped. Big topic, no delivery. What was the point? Why introduce this, and then do nothing about it?  Why suddenly make the girlfriend all important, towards the end of the book no less, when she has literally never had any page space before? It reeks of plot device.

Speaking of which . . . let’s get to the other three thousand odd characters. Now, I do kind of know why they were introduced . . . xenomorph bait. Wait . . . sorry . . . monster bait. These are not xenomorphs, even though they look EXACTLY like them and lay eggs in the wall. As the book transitions rapidly from horror to straight up suspense/thriller, it’s just battle scene after battle scene, but none of these people mean anything. We need more connection, otherwise it’s just repetitive, boring even. I’d have liked to care about at least one person who got eaten. Heck, I’d have even liked to worry about the girlfriend and her likelihood of survival.

At the end, there is the obligatory twist. It could have worked if time had been spent on characterization, but that didn’t happen, and so the ending was just another plot device. The “shocking twist” wasn’t earned; it was just a joke.

This book needed to slow down, build out the characters and situations, take time to create the world and the logic, and stop stealing everything from Alien. The ideas were certainly here, the atmosphere, even the main characters. But, as it is, while there were moments that got my attention and imagination, it’s just not there yet. This is a great outline for a potential book. This is not a book yet. This is not a first draft yet, but this does have the potential to be an entertaining riff on Alien, and I’d love to see it taken back and given the love and attention and time it deserves to make it that high-octane space / horror thriller it so clearly wants to be.

– Frances Carden

Follow my reviews on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/xombie_mistress

Follow my reviews on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/FrancesReviews

Frances Carden
Latest posts by Frances Carden (see all)