Customer Reviews

Aliens: Cauldron (Aliens (Dark Horse))

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I wanted to rate this book a 1 and a half actually for putting me to sleep every 2 pages during the first 200 pages. I dont mind boring books, but this one went nowhere when the author decided to use 14-17 year olds as the main characters, especially nerdy obnoxious ones, one of them actually makes the entire adult crew fall asleep with his own recipe and ties up the captain of an enormous ship just so he can be in control, and what's funny is that he manages to convince all his little gang which hate him! to quote Hudson in Aliens: Whoopee fkin do!

What I found disappointing was that the author really knew how to thrill you when the writing included Aliens, but unfortunately there was about 10-15 pages on them during the first 200 pages. She over specifies and wastes as much as 2 pages on such useless info on these teenage brats such as the color of one's shirt, and goes on and on and on about stupidities. The parts on the other ship, I found AMAZING, and would have rated the book 5 stars if the story was on that, unfortunately this part lasts only about 15-20 pages...

This book had the PERFECT Alien settings yet it went to waste :( Heck there's even mammoths running around in it!, okkkkkkay?!

Focused way too much on the crews of the two ships and not enough on the aliens. The part with the baby was ridiculous. The characters had the fortunate experience of having limited contact with the aliens. Baking soda neutralizing alien acid? I don't think so.

Having bought every books about Aliens and Predators in existence, Aliens: Cauldron story plot is very thin, full of holes, watered down and a anti-climax ending. One of the worse I've read. The deadiest creature in existence, is made impotent by the author.

If you buy an Alien novel, you expect to read something about the Aliens. With _Cauldron_ you get a novel about prodigies making their first space flight as part of a semester-in-space program. You get very little of the Aliens. In fact the monsters don't show up until about two thirds of the way through, by which time most Alien fans are likely to be exasperated with the lives of Carey's space-faring teenagers.

Not that she does a bad job with the characterization. The protagonist Ned is well drawn and I began to develop some real affection for the soft-spoken, straight-talking lad from the Isle of Man, as well as his foil, the arrogant Adam, who through his experience with the Aliens learns to put aside his pride.

Unfortunately, the rest of the characters are rather flat and predictable, as is the situation - a group of teenagers being stalked by a murderous beast in poorly lit, unfamiliar surroundings. Carey is at least honest enough to admit what crosses the mind of everyone who reads _Cauldron_. "You know what this is?" her lead Ned asks. "This is a teenage slasher flick."

There are some ingeniously plotted means for the kids to get pick off the Aliens that is not your typical showdown with sweaty marines totting large guns. In the end, though, I felt like I really hadn't read an Alien novel so much as a novel with a few aliens.

#

Aliens Novels: Book 12, Cauldron / 978-1-59582-113-3

I usually leave my summary recommendation until the end of my reviews, but this time I'll save time by placing it at the top: This is one of the worst books I've ever read, and it is my exceedingly strong recommendation that you not waste any of your money, or indeed any of your time on this horrendously bad novel.

After the pile of cliche and melodrama that was Carey's previous addition to the aliens series (DNA War), I didn't expect high art from "Cauldron", but this book greatly surpassed all my expectations that it would be awful. Although I had expected a heaping pile of cliche, melodrama, and anachronism (Carey habitually fails to comprehend that science fiction writing should have a different tone than a dime store detective novel), covered by a layer of boring "tell-don't-show" exposition and massive editing issues, it seems that I was being uncreative in my predictions and should also have anticipated that Carey would use this latest medium as a breathtakingly narcissistic diversion into her personal hobbies and interests.

"Cauldron" is largely composed of what Carey *wanted* to write about, as opposed to what she was *paid* to write about, which practically speaking boils down thus: this is a book about historic ships, and NOT a book about aliens. That someone signed off on this complete slap in the face of the aliens' readership is another crime entirely, but I have never seen such shoddy writing and complete disregard for the given subject material as Carey shows here. The "About the Author" note states that she's an enthusiast of historic ships, which you'll have already guessed long before you make it to the end note, because hardly a page goes by where she doesn't go off on a completely random tangent in order to spout factoids about ancient ships.

Allow me to elucidate: The main spaceship on which we open - and keep in mind this is supposed to be the distant future, long after humans have colonized other planets and the nuclear war has ravaged earth and most of the history books, for that matter - the main spaceship boasts a gigantic mural on its side of (and I can't believe I'm writing this) the Monitor and the Merrimac locked in battle. You know, the iron-clad ships that fought each other in the American civil war? *That* Monitor and Merrimac? If you don't remember much about the Monitor and Merrimac from school, don't despair - Carey spends several pages devoted to the history of those ships and, indeed, all American civil war era ships in general. Hey, you know those new state-of-the-art Joint Strike Fighter airplanes that American is currently developing? You know how those are being fitted out with murals of Hannibal's mighty Carthaginian war elephants? Of course not! Because that would be indescribably stupid! Oh, yeah, and the space ships of the future have 'stevedores' and 'bosuns' and probably those stupid high-pitched whistles, just because Carey enjoys using those words and describing the historical context behind them... over and over and OVER again...

A lot of "Cauldron" is written like Carey is vaguely aware that science fiction genre exists, and may have even seen a sci-fi movie once or twice in her life (NOT an aliens movie, though, obviously), but the overall concept is still completely foreign. I'm just going to make a blanket statement for all hack sci-fi writers, free of charge: In the distant space-faring future, there should NOT be references to a current "America", "Romania", or "Australia" (*especially* not in the aliens-verse, where Australia-the-continent was completely nuked, and Australia-the-government didn't survive the process). There should NOT be a Dutch-American immigrant on board with English so broken that she says things like "Dat's all dere is toot" (a direct quote, I swear, and roughly translating to "That's all there is to it," in case the context isn't clear). And while I'm the biggest Monty Python fan you can hope to find, you should NOT blatantly shoe-horn in Monty Python jokes into your sci-fi book ("What is the capital of Assyria? The correct answer is 'I don't know that', followed by a scream." I swear this is another direct quote from this novel.), and you *especially* shouldn't shoe-horn in the same joke TWICE, just in case the reader didn't notice your immense cleverness the first time around. And if you have a hobby like, oh, historic ships, or quilting, or chainsaw juggling, it shouldn't take up so much of the book that it completely obscures the main plot and indeed the actual REAL items of interest (i.e. the aliens) aren't even seen until well into the second half of the book.

The "About the Author" note also indicates that when Carey isn't mangling the aliens series, she churns out Star Trek novels by the dozens apparently and while this further confirms my theory that the sci-fi franchises I love must all be in the hands of gibbering lunatics and middle management, I will admit that I can kind-of-sort-of see some of this working for a Star Trek novel. Star Trek is a backwards-gazing science fiction universe, partly because it's a series that deals with the evolution of the human spirit over history, but mostly because TV sets are expensive and every set piece from the 'ancient' 20th century means that the week's episode made it in on-time and under-budget. A movie like "Aliens", however, is a *completely* different world and thematic style, and assuming that a successful Star Trek sci-fi writer will automatically be a good Aliens sci-fi writer is like saying that a Dragonball Z writer could churn out the plot of Nausicaa in a given afternoon - being in the same overall genre doesn't mean that the two have ANYTHING in common.

To bring this tirade to an end and sum it all up in a pithy one-line: Authors should not muck up established book franchises in order to indulge their personal and irrelevant hobbies.

~ Ana Mardoll

This represents my second foray into the weird and wonderful mind of Diane Carey (the first being DNA War of this same franchise). Surprisingly and despite a plethora of negative reviews to browse, I found Cauldron to be a step in the right direction.

The story simultaneously follows two spacecraft (and their respective crews): The Virginia and the Umiak. The former comes off as the traditional "space trucker" ideology seen time and time again throughout the films. The latter presents the very cool concept of young cadets having an opportunity to participate hands on in a military-style voyage. It is here that Carey introduces us to one of her wildest creations, Pearl Floy; a mutant freak show of a human being and outcast to her peers. The mere concept of such a character manages to capture the dark grittiness of the universe painted by the films themselves.

About my biggest complaint to this novel (and most of the franchise as a whole) is the reliance upon earth. Historical references, character backgrounds, clichés, and even animal species all spiral back to earth. Sure it makes for relate-ability but if you think back to the films, earth is a very small part to the greater whole. We don't even get a glimpse of the planet until the very end of Resurrection and through some earlier witty dialog; we discover that many of the crew have never even been there (and don't think very highly of the place at that).

Space is a very big place and it would be great if authors of the ALIENS franchise remembered that in the future, the role of earth is quite miniscule. That said I have to give Carey credit on crafting some interesting characters and dropping them into some pretty nasty situations. Also noteworthy is the fact that she created an interesting variant of the Xenomorph species in a couple of sections. So often these books paint the animals as merely giant ants but there isn't much terror in that. The movies got around this by continually introducing the viewer to new aliens (the queen, the dog/hybrid, the baby/hybrid, the predator/hybrid and so on).

Some may argue that the ending is a bit happy-go-lucky and others may find the antics of Thomas Pangborn to be a bit over the top, but I would counter that this is a pretty worthy entry into a rich universe. Considering the difficulty of attempting to bring something fresh to the table after six films and dozens of books, Carey manages to assemble some unique situations and a pretty memorable cast. This is a 3.5 star product but since Amazon won't allow for half-star ratings, I'll round it up to four on account of the fact that ALIENS books that aren't totally butchered are few and far between.

I wasn't real keen on Diane Carey's last foray into the Aliens world. Mostly I think she does a great job a taking an existing story (movie, tv show)and giving it great backstory. That's her strength. So far, after two aliens books she has shown poor plotting, strange motivations, and in this book, little of the aliens. Very little. Too bad, there are some great opportunities here, but they fail to materialize to any great extent. To be fair, there are a couple really good moments, but they are overshadowed by the obnoxiousness and stupidity of having a shipload of teenagers that I certainly did not care if they lived or died. I actually found myself rooting for the Captain's plot to kill them all off and survive with just himself as a grand hero, which should never have happened had the characterization been better.
The aliens books need a new author.

I just finished reading Diane Carey's second ALIENS novel titled CAULDRON and let me tell you it was not easy! I've read a lot of movie related tie-in books over the past 25+ years, but never have I been so bored with a writer as I am with Diane and her two ALIENS books.
I started this book around the second week in August, got stuck half way thru it due to boredom and didn't finish it until October 18th. Almost 2 months to read 284 measly pages! A good writer hooks you in right away and keeps you hooked and coming back for more! A good book is hard to put down, this one was not! It actually fell out of my hands and onto the floor when I dozed off reading it in bed! (Totally true!)
As most reviewers have pointed out, there isn't a whole lot of alien related action in this short book. It does take quite a while for the alien carnage to start so be prepared for large boring lulls inbetween.
What there is plenty of though is "attempted character development" which is normally a good thing, but in Diane's hands, it was long, tedious, and just bored me to tears. This resulted in me not caring for ANY of her characters which is never a good thing. I honestly had a hard time keeping track of the endless list of people populating both spaceships in the story.
This book reads like a mish mash of "Mutiny on the Bounty" meets "ALIENS" meets "Noah's Ark" and contains several scenes that will leave you scratching your head. The first scene is were one of the older and brighter cadets concocts a drug that he uses on most of the adult crew putting them into a temporary coma. He also has the captain awake but gagged and in chains. It is not made clear how one teenager could over power and take out five trained adults all on his own without ANYONE else on the ship ever noticing.
Another scene has the ship's cook taking on an alien with a meat cleaver and than throws simple baking soda on the alien's acid blood to neutralize it. I honestly don't think a molecular acid that can eat thru multiple levels of a ship could be stopped with a simple box of "Arm & Hammer"!
Finally, towards the end of the book, the cadets release a slew of live animals that the ship is transporting to various new worlds out in space in the hopes they will distract the aliens so the humans can slip thru unnoticed. That's all cool and plausible, but then Diane throws in a wooly mammoth, saber tooth tiger and a grizzly bear into the mix throwing what little plausibility there was out the window! They seemed to be there simply to have cool animals for the aliens to fight with since the teenage crew she created doesn't offer much hope for exciting action scenes.
I don't want this review to come across as totally negative so I do have a few good things to say. Diane is really good when writing about all of the technical details like how the two ships exchange cargo in deep space. All the technobable sounded plausible to me. She is also good with all of the ship jargon since she is a sailor herself. She also came up with a creepy and sick scene where two aliens use a dead body in a gruesome way to lure in their next victim. While I thought the scene was out of character for the aliens, it still gave me chills. She is also very good at describing the gory bits in yucky detail. It appears the publisher got a better editor than was used on "DNA War" because I saw only a couple of typos this time around.
As should be blatantly obvious, I'm not a huge fan of the book or the author and I wonder if this review will get another direct response from Diane? I'm glad to see two different writers will be taking on the next two books in this series. Diane has had the ball twice now and fumbled both times. You have been warned!

Once past the front cover one finds "Cauldron" lacks sizzle. Thanks to listless character and plot development this tasteless meal never even approaches a simmer. Action is all but lacking and, when it does, it fails to capture any interest.

A painfully slow read, it is indeed sad to think that the paper used to print this plodding poorly scripted tale contributed to deforestation. Save your money and a tree. If you must read this visit a local library.

The worst Aliens book I have read so far. This storyline was so unbelievable that I spent most of my time shaking my head and sighing. Stone-age animals battling Aliens, just crazy. I bought this book to read about Aliens not about whiz kids, ignorant crewmen and prehistoric animals. All this garbage detracted from the real stars, the Aliens. Oh, did I mention that someone had a baby along the way which one of the female kids was caring for? I am still shaking my head. Terrible effort from this Author.