Book Review: "Alien: Out of the Shadows" (by Tim Lebbon)

- by Ninja Ross, 13 February 2014

I really like seeing chests explode. I like it more when the chest explodes because there’s something inside, desperate to get out. It’s even better when that thing is a penis-shaped alien that’s almost impossible to kill and likes to hunt people down and let squid spiders have sex with their face!!! And that’s a pretty specific thing to be into. Thankfully, we have one of the greatest horror franchises in existence: Alien. It has Chest bursting, face intercourse and more! I couldn’t be happier!

The Alien franchise is actually pretty huge; you not only have the four films main films, plus the Alien vs. Predator films and the prequel... You also have comic books, novels and video games. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear there’s a musical somewhere... Oh, here it is! 

So, let’s take a look at the latest Alien novel: Alien: Out of the Shadows by Tim Lebbon.

Out of the Shadows is set between Alien and Aliens. It follows Chris “Hoop” Hooper and his fellow miners on a mining vessel known as Marion, orbiting LV178. They’re mining for a material called Trilobite, which is the hardest  mineral known to man. It’s also worth a heck of a lot of money.

So who gets involved? The Weyland-Yutani Corporation! Man! MAN! They’re always up to something. What’s with those guys? Man...

Things go wrong pretty darn fast when  a drop ship that should be carrying the minders for the next shift turns up with Xenomorphs on board (I have no idea why, I think they’d make terrible miners...). After some roughhousing and running away, they manage to get off a distress signal. Since the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is involved, that doesn’t work out the way they want. Instead another drop ship is diverted. A drop ship carrying everyone’s favourite Xeno Slayer, Ellen Ripley.

Things go crazy! Aliens wreck stuff! Aliens get killed with sci-fi tools, Dead Space style!

And it certainly is very Dead Space-y. Obviously, Dead Space is inspired by the Alien Franchise, but this book seems to highlight those inspirations and almost pay homage to it.

But it’s still very much an Alien book. Truth be told, it’s closer in tone to Aliens than the superior Alien. But it does strike a good balance between action and horror. Lebbon weaves a pretty great story, here for the most part. It starts nicely and doesn’t linger on anything that’s not important. A slightly longer build-up would have been nice, but maybe that’s just me.

The characters are... Not so great. They’re not bad, though. They serve a purpose and aren’t annoying or boring in any way. But they’re very cliché and generic. Then again, I suppose it’s impressive that Lebbon prevented cliché and generic from being boring.

Where Lebbon really excels, though, is the action and horror; he does his level best to avoid lifting scenes from the movies, leading to some really well told action scenes and some well done horror moments. He doesn’t focus on the horror side of things as much as I’d like, but that’s something I can live with. The Alien franchise hasn’t really focused on horror that much since the original movie.

It’s nice to see that Lebbon is a big fan of the franchise, though. Or that he’s at least done his homework properly. There are plenty of references to continuity and, since it’s clearly not meant for the new readers in the first place, that’s a welcome thing.

I enjoyed the book quite a bit, overall. It has issues here and there but they’re easily overlooked. Until the end of the book. Now, this is where we go into spoiler territory, so... Look away if you don’t want to know the ending. Just scroll down, I’ll let you know when it’s safe to read again.

SPOILERS!!!

It’s pretty obvious that something’s amiss about Ripley waking up between Alien and Aliens, right? Why didn’t she mention it in the briefing in Aliens? Why didn’t she say “Oh, yeah! There was this one time I teamed up with this guy named Hoop and his buddies! It was aces, we killed aliens and stuff!”

At the end of the book, she says she wants to forget. She asks to have parts of her memory wiped. The whole experience with the mining crew, not the original encounter. What’s up with that? That’s a terrible way to end the book! It makes the entire thing kind of pointless!

It’s a very disappointing ending to a pretty decent book. It sours the whole experience. It does give some insight into the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, but... It’s not worth the bad ending.

SPOILERS OVER!!! IT’S OK TO LOOK AGAIN!!!

Overall, it’s not a bad book. It has a terrible ending that kind of ruins the rest of it but it’s still worth a read.


Have you read "Alien: Out of the Shadows" yet? You can get it on the Titan Books website. What are your thoughts on it? Sound off in the comments below!

Tagged: books, Reviews.

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