Customer Reviews

Nightmare Asylum: Aliens Book 2

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Continuing the story from Aliens: Earth Hive, Nightmare Asylum follows Bueller, Wilks, and Billie as they manage to escape the slaughter of the rest of the Marines they were sent to the Alien's home world with. They return to earth, only to find it completely overrun by aliens with few human survivors. The trio manages to escape to the cold confines of space, just to flee into the arms of a madman.

This book is fast paced, full of action and great character moments. It was adapted from Dark Horse comics graphic novel Aliens Nightmare Asylum 1569712174. This comic book version uses Hicks and Newt, but the Steve Perry version that doesn't is as good, which is a huge compliment.

The book is a fast, fun read, perfect for light vacation reading if being scared is your cup of tea, because this book is frightening, one of the scariest of the aliens series.

Highly recommended to fans of the Aliens films and sci-fi fans everywhere.

I can't say its the best out of the first three but it wasnt bad either. I think it needed a little more suspence in it. The best part of the book is the end of it, when wilks and everyone is running around trying to get off the planet and in space when they fool Spears to get the shuttle. The begining was really good to. Otherwise it was a good book and worth getting!

The premise of the story isn't anything special: Someone wants to use the aliens as a weapon. But there are two differences between General Spears and some of the other people who want to do the same: 1) Spears wants to use the aliens to fight the aliens. 2) Spears is one screwed up . . . well the rest of this would probably be censored. People interested in psychology should pick up the book, especially those interested in abnormal psyche. He's a control freak, sadist, a narccist of sorts, and to top it off, he thinks he's a messiah! Getting to look at Spears's thoughts and a few past experiences really shows how messed up this guy is and really works well to build up a strong emotional reaction to the man. He's not completely insane: His plan does make sense and its possible to relate to him because of that. Which means that a reader is also more able to feel revulsion when they see which screws are missing in his head. He's developed in such a way that he's crazy, but not too crazy for someone to have sympathy or anything.

The characters from the first book are also further developed pretty nicely but the spotlight is pretty firmly on Spears. Which brings the problem with the book that others have reported: The attention isn't on the aliens. If Nightmare Asylum wasn't set in the Aliens universe, it might have been better received. But as it stands, the book is a good look into the human aspect of the human vs. alien war.

And be sure to reread the book after reading Female War. The stuff Bueller says about the future of synthetics is great foreshadowing to the nature of a character in the 3rd book.

Too darn much was happening in Earth Hive to allow it to develop to a really interesting extent. So this book was a relief to read in that it had one basic plotline, and therefore we got a lot more characterization of the main three characters -- old "doc holliday" Colonial Marine Wilks, the guy who isn't afraid to die and feels a need to wipe out the aliens. Then there's billie, who's lived her whole life in a mental institution since she was the sole civilian survivor of an alien attack on her world years ago. And the villian, General Thomas Spears, who thinks he's the messiah and is trying to tame aliens to go back to earth and kill the ones already there.

Unfortunately, spears is insane and paranoid, so anyone he doesn't like is bug food. This book was so much better written than the first it's incredible, but the author still has a problem with semi-colons. The biggest problem with this book, and the reason it doesn't rate very high, is because it really doesn't have anything to do with the aliens or the alien infestation, and nothing is accomplished to that end. It was an interesting sci-fi story to be sure, but it didn't give us anything essential.

This is an ok addition to the Aliens Saga, but don't expect much from it.

Aliens Novels: Book 2, Nightmare Asylum / 978-0-553-56158-6

When Earth Hive (Aliens, Book 1) finished with the audacious cliff-hanger of Earth completely overrun by aliens and the remaining human population scattering into the galaxy desperate for safety, I couldn't pick "Nightmare Asylum" up fast enough. Author Steve Perry picks up exactly where he left off, with Wilks and Billie in a rickety transport in deep space, hoping to reach their pre-programmed destination (wherever that might be) before they run out of food and supplies.

When Billie begins to suffer from the vivid 'dreams' that empathic humans experience in the presence of aliens, she realizes that their transport is carrying more than they bargained for. And when Wilks and Billie search the ship only to find four recently infected humans, once deep in stasis and now very dead, they receive their first piece of evidence that not every surviving human fully appreciates how dangerous these creatures are.

Their relief at arriving safely to their destination, a distant military compound and civilian colony, quickly evaporates when they realize, almost instantly upon arrival, that the general in command of the base is completely insane, obsessed with delusions of creating his own tame alien army and using them to recapture Earth. General Spears has his own home grown alien queen and has fed more than half his troops and all the colonists to the aliens in order to produce more drone warriors.

Perry handles the exposition perfectly, providing a wealth of detail about alien anatomy, mating, genetics, behavior, and motivation without ever seeming to abandon the plot or get overly bogged down in details. Perry also carefully and realistically explains how the General has managed to keep the queen and her drones under control, as well as provide a somewhat plausible explanation for why the mad general has not yet been fragged by his own troops despite his propensity to throw them to the aliens for the slightest infraction. In a plot device utilized by pretty much every James Axler "Deathlands" novel, it is up to the strangers who just blew into town to kill the bad guy and destroy the monsters, whilst welcoming the death that they've been dodging for far too long.

This novel isn't high literature by any stretch, and contains a few occasional small flaws. General Spears is just a little too smart, the supporting characters are fairly one-dimensional and clearly ancillary to the main characters, and Wilks and Billie step out of character at a crucial moment in order to accommodate the confines of the story. Perry has also slightly upped the nudity and sexuality in this book, including a rather implausible scene where Billie strips naked in order to distract a couple of dim-witted marines. Having said all that, however, the plot is solidly entertaining, the writing is crisp and quick, the tension is thick, and there is a wealth of new details on the alien race - enough to keep the most rabid fan happily content. In short, the novel is a solid four-star book and a must read for die-hard fans of the aliens franchise.

There is even a pleasantly startling conclusion where Ellen Ripley enters the scene - likely because the same writers who had been forced to switch "Hicks and Newt" to "Wilks and Billie" because of the conflict between the novel and Alien 3 now realized that the plot development of an earth completely overrun by aliens was enough of a conflict to the movie series to justify a clean break and allow Ripley to appear unencumbered in this new fictional world.

~ Ana Mardoll

I really enjoyed Aliens: Nightmare Asylum. The first book (Aliens: Earth Hive) was enjoyable, but not really that great. Nightmare Asylum, on the other hand, is clever, interesting, and has great characters. It isn't the greatest book I've ever read, but for pure sci-fi alien entertainment, pick this one up.

I love the alien series and I was waiting for this book a long time, then when it came I immedintly started reading it. I finished it in two days. It was good, good characters, good story but one flaw, THE ALIENS! This is supposed to be an aliens novel and they only appeared four times in the whole book. Another thing I think getting a hard - on by an alien egg is pretty gross, this guy Spears had some issues. But all in all it was good, alot of action, alot of gore, and a pretty good story. I'm reading The Female War now and I tell you what I think about that one to.

This book was a lot better then the first one. I like the story line. It was a little borring at serten times. But, most of the time it was a very good book. I think Spears got what he desrved, at the end of the book

The second book of the alien trilogy book series, Aliens:Nightmare Asylem, brings us once again with Wilks, Billie, and Bueller as they land on an unknown planet they read life forms from. This is the Nightmare Asylem. First off, i loved the emotion in this book. It definitely gave me more of that than book 1. Sure, action is great, but love and emotional characters are very touching. That's probably what i like best in this book. Book1:Action, Book2: Emotion. What I didn't like in this book had to be the villian, Thomas Spears, the leader of this "Nightmare Asylem", where he is breeding Aliens to use for his own personal conquest. He was evil, and you didn't like him for it. I found myself saying, "com'on! Die Spears!" And i was rooting for the good guys. That's great talent on the part of Steve Perry who wrote Spears' character so well. But still, in alien books and movies, aren't the main enemy's supposed to be, well, the Aliens? They werent in this book. When they did appear, I would sit more comfortably and get ready for some great action. When they were battling Spears, I found myself leaning down again cause his battle scenes weren't as fun to read as the Alien scenes. You should Buy this book though. It's a great follow up, even though it doesn't quite match up with it's book 1 counterpart. YOU WONT BE DISAPPOINTED!

after reading the first book, i was not very exited about reading this one, but since i bought it, might as well. and what a plesant suprise!ok, so it does get a bit boring, but not as bad as the first. as i say, the ending it very good and should be read for that alone. as much as i want to, i wont spoil it. great book, i rate it M15+(moderate violence, sexual references, coarse language)