Customer Reviews

Transformers: Exodus: The Official History of the War for Cybertron (Transformers (Del Rey))

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I was excited when I first picked this book up over the weekend. I love origin stories, and was interested how this one would tie in with the various continuities.

What I ended up reading was only a few steps away from being a jumbled mess.

Here are my main complaints:
1.) There is no sense of when events occur in relation to each other, other than that events in later chapters occur after those that occur in earlier chapters (for the most part). It was annoying trying to figure out if eons had passed or just days (or if events are occurring at the same time).
2.) The number of references to different continuities can get annoying. "Project Generation One"? Really? It felt like all the continuities got mixed up in a stew, but not everything mixed together properly.
3.) Did X transformer really just get thrown in for a random 1 paragraph mention? Why? How does this advance the plot? Does it reveal any new character motivations? Or is it just fanboy service?
4.) Alpha Trion's role as Yoda seemed ill-conceived. If he really was one of the 13 primes, shouldn't he have known all about Omega Supreme and how to activate him? Why didn't he reveal all about the Matrix, Vector Sigma, et al to Optimus in order to assist in the war? He seems eternally shackled to a caste that he was forced into by Sentinel Prime (who was the best character by far... actual character development!!! Shocker!).
5.) There's little indication after the early part of the book which character is being focused on. The points of view seem to jump around quite a bit, to the point where you're like "Megatron sounds like a good guy!" "Oh, wait, maybe that's Optimus..."

If the book were interspersed with vignettes of Sentinel Prime's thoughts, showing his development from a stagnant, cowardly leader, through his imprisonment and torture, out to his realization and subsequent redemption and death... that would be a much-stronger book.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. I just wish it was better-edited.

I'll start with the positives about this book:

1. It was not written by Alan Dean Foster.
2. It was not written by Simon Furman.
3. There are NO humans at all in this book. (Yes, Hasbro, it's true: we want *robots* in our robot stories, fancy that!)

That's....uhhhh, about it.

Problems with this book, in random order--I am keeping anything potentially spoilery to within the first 50 or so pages:

1. Editing is non-existent. The prose was flabby and there's no real sense of conflict or scene. Scenes will 'happen', set off with hard-hiatuses, but will have no conflict or resolution in them. Things are repeatedly restated, taking up pagespace and time that might have better gone to setting, characterization and plot development.

2. Pacing is s-l-o-w. It's a bit over 250 pages but it seems to last forever (not helped, of course, by the flabby prose).

3. A lot of the characterization makes no sense. Alpha Trion is some spooky dude who keeps the entire history of Cybertron. We're told he can't read the future clearly, only glimpses. Yet he's...regularly befuddled by actions that have already happened--that should, technically, be in his little magic book. Orion's emotional shifts are laughably volatile--he's suspicious, but then he's chumming it up. And in a 'canon' that says (*several times*) that new mechs sort of wash up by the Well, why does Megatron keep calling Orion 'brother'? What does that even mean in this? (Worldbuilding fail!) Megatron, who is allegedly uneducated, is a rhetorical genius with an extensive vocabulary. Orion is a lowly clerk who gets away with internal sabotage without even getting punished by his boss, much less having, oh, like an internal qualm? And for those who love Optimus? Yeah, one of his big psychological turning point moments is that he wants to go to an amusement park but can't. The angst! The pathos!! Wait. This is the guy who becomes Optimus Prime?

(And don't even get me started on the forced cameos like Barricade, Blackout, Cliffjumper, etc.)

4. What canon is this? It directly contradicts movieverse, though it involves elements of IDW's Megatron Origin. One of my friends suggests it's a prequel for the upcoming cartoon, another says it's background for the recently released video game, but then admits it has nothing to do with the plot of the game other than the notion of 'Dark Energon'. So...is this a microcontinuity? It seems to bill itself as game-canon. Is it it's own thing? Why can't I tell? (If this is a harbinger of the quality of the upcoming cartoon? Count me *out*.)

5. It...contradicts itself at many points. I'll give you just one example.

Page 78. "Not even Starscream, who had spent much of his scientific career in the labs....". Okay, Starscream = scientist, right?

Then let's go to page 158. "See what?" Starscream asked. Neither Starscream nor Megatron were scientists."

Wait, what?

The real killer is that there are some really interesting concepts that could have been very cool if handled...better. The author clearly has no grasp, and certainly no love of the beloved Transformers characters, and it shows in every tedious page.

Look, I'm a long time fan of Transformers--I was one of the original Generation 1 fans, back 26 years ago. I've stood by this franchise through a lot. But this book is turning me into one of those fans who will insist that this is not 'my' canon. This is like...some sort of tolerance test by Hasbro to see how much they can get away with or something. Either that or this is some Thanatos-drive cry for attention from the franchise.

I've been led to believe that Hasbro's pretty involved and controlling of their franchise. Yet they let the sloppy writing, the bad characterization, the internal inconsistencies go?

In short? If you want to read some good Transformers fiction, and I *never* thought I'd say this, but you'd be better off looking at fanfiction than this hack drivel. I want my money back. No, heck with that: I want my Transformers back.

I wouldn't say Alex Irvine is a bad writer - he certainly knows how to write and construct a plot - but why oh why is there never any passion, emotion or even the vaguest description for anything ever included in mainstream Transformers novels? Is it because 'Hey, they're robots'?

SPOILERS AHEAD! Stop reading now if you don't want to know!

I found the story to be so cold, sterile and emotionless that I was struggling to keep reading. There is no description or sense of how big powerful and awesome Optimus Prime is. Megatron fares a little better in that respect, since he comes across as the fearsome and mighty gladiator that he starts the novel as. The characters speak in short clipped sentences like a learn to read novel for children, with the occassional reference to someone speaking 'quietly' or 'in anger'.

When Orion Pax goes from being a lowly clerk/librarian to becoming Optimus Prime, it is in name only. This is at odds with what happens in the cartoon series or anywhere else in the various TF universes. He's never described in terms of his huge size, body, shape, colour or anything else as changing. But then in this book, there was no description of what he looked like as Orion Pax to start with. That right there is a brilliant example of what is wrong with this book.

The whole way through the story the characters come and go and we're never told what they look like. They pop up, say something, and they come back again - or not. Because the Transformers are on Cybertron, they definitely do NOT look like what we know they are on Earth with their colours and alt modes. For lack of anything else for my imagination and brain to go by, by default I was picturing all the bots in their Earth forms.

Jetfire is an essential part of the plot, but in TF:ROTF, he shows up as never having seen Optimus before! And that is another problem. The story is a strange melding together of original cartoon canon, Bayverse, Transformers Animated, and UK comics. If you're reading this book (like I suspect most fans are) as a 'before' scenario for the Michael Bay movies, you will be very confused.

As a female Transformers fan, I had hoped there would at least be the faintest mention of any female transformers, especially Elita One (even as a no-nonsense unit commander without the faintest trait of feelings between her and Optimus) but like other women, I have come to expect being left out in the cold when it comes to femmes. No females in this ANYWHERE. No Elita One, no Chromia, no femmes at all. With a male author this was a foregone conclusion. When men write Transformers, it's war, war, and more war. No personal relationships and certainly no basic friendly emotions between the male characters either (and no, I'm not referring to homosexuality, just basic friends behaviour).

Female Transfans and Male Transfans are always butting heads about this topic, but I'm afraid that the default reality for Transformers when it comes right down to it, is that there are no female Transformers because Transformers is 99% written by men for men. I think the original cartoon series episodes were amazing and incredibly bold in the first place to show Elita, Chromia, Moonracer, and the others. Especially by showing Elita as Optimus Prime's girlfriend. Hang on to that notion ladies, because we're not going to see that anywhere else in the official universe!

On the whole, I found the book to be stiff, clinical and cold. I kept trying to love it or view it as an acceptably good story, but by the last half of the book, I gave up. I plodded on and finished it because I spent $35 for it, but it wasn't even remotely enjoyable. Sorry Alex Irvine.

I have to say that this is a good book to avoid. I was excited to read it - I loved the War for Cybertron video game's story, and this was being billed as the prequel - but it turns out it's just a poorly written mess with no continuity, and infected by Michael Bay's movies.

I'm trying to stay vague enough to not spoil anything for you who still might want to read this - but just to warn you, the following might give some stuff away...

Just to add to how poorly this book is written (read the other reviews for more) - here's an example: chapter 6 ends with megaton with Orion as an attack hits. Chapter 7 says that when Megatrn heard about that attack, he was talking with Orion while Orion over the Grid, while they are across Cybertron from each other. They are clearly talking via TV. A page later, no wait, they're together. Two pages later - no wait, Orion is back home, I think, cuz he makes a call but... No he's with Megatron's troops... Confusing things like this happen all the time. At one point the character Ratbat shows up, talking and standing behind a podium ... And then ON the podium... If you know the old toys and cartoon, you might imagine the purple bat that changes into one of Soundwave's tapes, but there's no explanation at all until chapters later, when sure enough that's what it was.

The Transformers franchise storyline is a mess. It already was before Michael Bay came along - there was the cartoon storyline (that had it's own problems), the completely separate Marvel comic storyline, then much later came IDW and other's comics which muddled things further, and then Michael Bay, then the War for Cybertron game (which could agree with the cartoon, only excepting how the characters look).

And then this book comes out, claiming to be "official". First off, Hasbro, what's that even MEAN? This book sounds at first like it's setting up the video game storyline, which is great by me, but then suddenly half way through the book, in ONE chapter, the author ruins it all. He talks about the Allspark getting lost in space, and Bumblebee already knowing Optimus and losing his ability to speak. What??

This book could have been something great. It could have told a good story. But this author is terrible, and the book borrows chaotically from too many sources to even guess what universe it's supposed to be in. I wish Hasbro WOULD decide on an official Transformers cannon, but when they put the "official" stamp on the War for Cybertron game, AND on this book, and they don't agree with each other...

I would have put up with a lot of bad writing, if it had at least made some sense...

As a huge Transformer fan growing up as a child I couldn't wait to read what Hasbro was promoting as "The New Transformer Bible" Unfortunately what I got was a sloppy, boring, inconsistent pile of crap! By shoehorning a few classic names into the story as it went along, it felt like the author did no research on these characters what so ever... Not even Optimus Prime received any type of visual description....A retooled Orion Pax nood which was Optimus Primes origin in the original animated series would've fit nicely but instead they just take a "clerk" and decide to make him leader. And if the poor character development and contradicting continuity wasn't frustrating enough, the author spends huge amount of time building up the use of "dark energon" by the Decepticons which basically goes no where at the end of the novel.

You would think that with a history as rich as Transformers an origin story could write itself. But between this novel and that live actions franchise, they've proven that the Transformers lore should not be placed in the hands of amateurs.

Or this novels case, at least give it to someone who actually knew who the Transformers were...

Let my start by saying that I don't like to review products I haven't used 100%, but I was unable to make it past page seventy of this book. It's really that bad.

Hasbro contracted Alex Irvine to write a book that would serve as a prequel to the War for Cybertron video game which in turn would be a prequel to the new Transformers Prime television series. Unfortunately for Hasbro both Irvin and High Moon Studios (the company contracted to develop the video game) had their own ideas. Unwilling to cooperate with Hasbro or each other, the book and the game had nothing to do with the series, and contradict each other as well. What was supposed to be one continuity has become an irreconcilable mess.

On top of this, the book itself is at best a rough draft. There are major continuity holes as early as chapter six. In a single conversation between Orion Pax and Megatronus, the setting changes inexplicably. At first they meet in person at a secure location. Mid-conversation Orion is back at the city and is talking over a vid-link, and then near the end of the conversation they are once again in person. For a novel that is supposed to emphasize the plot, this book fails miserably.

It's clear that this book was never edited, nor even read, prior to being published. It's an insult to the fanbase and to every struggling unpublished author out there that this garbage would see public release. Alex Irvine is an established writer as well as a college professor, so these errors don't make sense to come from it. It's possible it was brought on by a rushed release date, but it would've been nice if he'd at least taken the time to read the last paragraph he wrote before picking up where he left off.

In addition to that the novel has virtually no pace. Nothing is established and nothing happens as you wander from one lengthy conversation to the next. In addition to which the story displays absolutely no creativity in anything. If you've read any of the comics, watched any of the television shows, then you've already heard this story. Megatron, one of the greatest classic villains of all time, is nothing but a brute who copied his name from a feared transformer of legend (yes, according to the book, the Fallen was Megatronus Prime. Stifle your vomit if you can). Optimus Prime is Orion Pax, a curious data clerk with nothing to do. Other reviewers are correct; you'll find better written fanfictions on the internet.

Save your money, do not get this book!

I picked this up as soon as I could, being a Transformers fan since childhood and rediscovering my love for the robotic mythology through the recently released War for Cybertron video game. But rather than getting an epic sci-fi history lesson and war story, I found myself going through a wreckage of poorly made references to the Transformer toys, cartoons, comics, books and the recently released video game.

As noted by other readers, errors and contradictions can be found throughout the book. It is strange to find plot contradictions and wrong names at various parts, especially when there is a wealth of accurate information the author could have easily accessed in writing this book. I will add my own: Chapter 28 says there were Seekers (plural) who joined the Autobots, and yet the next paragraph states that there was only one of them ("The *sole* exception")- Jetfire (who should be Skyfire for copyright reasons).

The author throws in various characters in cameo appearances and minor roles, but some of his selections seem strange or even silly. For example, the almost unknown character of Armorhide the comedian is introduced earlier than the more iconic Ironhide the warrior. The former's character is established more directly in the story, while we only get various short dialogue and snippets of the latter despite his popularity and more personal involvement and contribution to the war.

The research the author did of the characters in the book, while accurate in most cases, misses the fact that much of the Transformers' personalities were displayed and defined by the cartoon. It is strange to find the characters speaking so lengthily, philosophically, emotionally and insecurely in the book as compared to any of their older incarnations.

Much of the writing seems very forced. Megatron is depicted as a passionate and sincere freedom fighter and yet is also hugely callous when it comes to some of his followers and plots being violent and criminal (despite statements saying he had nothing to do with them, his depiction easily leaves readers feeling like it was him all along). This is confusing to say the least and downright weird at the most. It also makes him a much less sympathetic character than the author intends him to be. Similarly, his feelings of betrayal towards Orion Pax's elevation to Optimus Prime was very rushed and jarring- he trusted Orion Pax enough with their cause to call him his "brother" and yet doesn't even give him a single chance to patch things up to continue their fight against the castes.

Optimus Prime also acts out of character- where he is supposed to be peaceful, humble and selfless, following Megatron's lead and acting more as guide and spokesperson to their cause, he simply takes up the mantle of Prime with the barest of questions. For someone established to be looking up to Megatron for most of the novel, he doesn't even consider asking the High Council if Megatron might be more worthy of leadership.

I was personally misled by the marketing for this book- I found out about this book when it was touted to be the background and prequel to the Transformers: War for Cybertron video game. However, the story depicted here is very different from that presented in the game, in fact borrowing from so many other different Transformer storylines and sources. Where fan service is concerned, the game does a much better job, integrating quotes from the 1986 Transformer movie more appropriately than this book does. Similarly, though I know that Omega Supreme, easily one of the most recognizeable of Transformer characters, can speak normally, the game had him speak in his mechanical, clipped, straightforward speech pattern (something he's famous for) whereas this book did not. The writer missed a huge opportunity to score points with Transformers fans by not doing that.

Ultimately, Transformers: Exodus is at best a poorly written exposition of Cybertron and its history, but where much of its material and direction is dubious, I'm afraid it's not worth taking seriously. That there are so many mistakes in the book is a huge disservice to the franchise and makes obvious that the only reason the book was written was to make money at the expense of fan appreciation for the Transformers. Transformers fans are better off watching the cartoons, reading the other books and comics, and/or playing the video game than buying and reading this.

I know this book has gotten alot of flack for various reasons and I wish to address some of them for those of you may be on the fence about picking this up. Let me start byt saying that this book will not be remembered fifty years from now nor will its merits and themes be discussed around the water cooler at work. What it is, is a thoroughly entertaining yarn.

Those who speak of continuity will be quick to point out how it doesn't line up with the movies or with the generation 1 (1980's cartoon) storyline. My response to that is, "who cares?" All that you need to enjoy this book is a love of Transformers and a free imagination that does not need to be hand held through the entire story. That is not meant as an insult to any of my fellow reviewers but I would suggest that maybe we take our fiction to seriously when it is something that is meant to entertain us. When you have so many different people working in different medias on the same story it becomes difficult to keep canon. If you decide to enjoy only those stories that are canon then you will frustrate yourself and never enjoy anything.

With all that said I really enjoyed this book for what it was...a story about how the war started and how both Megatron and Optimus came about. I was thrilled at reading about each character I have grown to love over the years of my daft affair with this franchise. I enjoyed every aspect of this story and if you can approach the story with an open mind with a love of Transformers then you will enjoy it but if you have rigid parameters in which you enjoy this franchise then you might consider passing it by. I hope you will give it a try. I am excited to begin reading "EXILES" and hope the series continues.

Transform and roll out!

I picked this up thinking that it would follow the history of Cybertron as put out in the Transformers cartoon series from the 1980s, but it didn't follow any of it except for them all leaving on the Ark at the end. Because if I remember correctly, Orion Pax got "killed" then was reconstructed by Alpha Trion as Optimus Prime.

And Project Generation One was lame.

I was disappointed; this could have been so much more.

This book has the best origin story for both Megatron and Optimus Prime that I have been able to find outside of a small handful of comic books. It is full of interesting storys and battles between Autobots and Decepticons. This book and its sequel are worth the money.