Alien: Prototype review

Alien: Prototype by Tim Waggoner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


While I'm not the kind of guy who typically reads media tie-ins, as soon as I saw that this was written by Tim Waggoner I became intrigued. I'm a huge fan of the Alien movies, and seeing Waggoner as the scribe left me with hope that this would be a true to form sci-fi/horror blend.

Those of you who may have similar reservations about this book need not fear, I had a blast reading it, and Waggoner managed to bring something completely new to the table. Alien: Prototype follows Zula Hendricks, Colonial Marine turned security trainer and Tamar Prather, corporate spy for Venture, a Weyland-Yutani competitor. When an ovomorph is brought to a Venture colony, the resident scientist decides they must study it with a human test subject, and it all goes downhill from there.

I enjoyed following Hendricks, she was a strong female lead who's out for one thing, hunting Xenomorphs. Tamar Prather is all about working for herself and whoever will pay her the most. The other characters in this book were written decent enough and Waggoner shows that he knows his Alien stuff. Everything felt like it fit perfectly in the universe. Due to certain circumstances within the book, the Xenomorph here is deadlier than ever before. All I can say without spoiling anything is that it's called a Necromorph, and for good reason. Waggoner does an excellent job switching back and forth between perspectives here, and keeping the story interesting until we can get what we all want, Xenomorph action; There's plenty of that on display here and fans of the series won't be disappointed.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. The Necromorph is just as deadly as advertised and brings something new and interesting to a very familiar world. There's enough blood and gore here to satisfy anyone who's into that, even if you aren't necessarily a fan of the franchise.