Synopsis
Some years after the events of Aliens and Alien 3— an artist obsessed with the disturbing visceral potential of the xenomorphs is pursued to an abandoned colony. Written by the much-celebrated Shaun Hamill, author of A Cosmology of Monsters and The Dissonance.
Desperate, depressed and nearly destitute, Cynthia Goodwin goes against her better judgement to keep her ship the Chariot and its crew in work: she agrees to meet with the reclusive billionaire Roman Fade.
Fade’s request is unorthodox: go to the abandoned colony of New Providence and bring back his former lover, the renowned artist Corinth Bloch.
The job is rife with uncertainty. No one knows what happened on New Providence or why it is under quarantine. And Bloch may be brilliant, but he is also deranged. As Cynthia follows his path to the colony, she learns of a mind obsessed with images of dark and horrifying creatures… Of an almost religious fervour for the ultimate subject for his art… Of the drive to capture the sublime terror of the perfect organism…
Review
I had just rewatched/watched the entire franchise as well as Alien: Earth and was planning on writing a franchise review when I saw this was coming out. I honestly didn’t know they did mixed media, but once I knew I practically rushed to Titan to make my case for why I should be an arc reader. So many many thanks to Titan for the physical ARC.
This book delivers us Captain Cynthia Goodwin, owner and somewhat operator of the Chariot. While she has a good and loyal crew, it wouldn’t be a lie to say that times have been hard. The ship used to belong to her mother, and while she carries on her legacy, that thing is certainly getting on in years. Problem after problem are cutting too deeply into the team’s profits and holding out for the big score is getting hard. Then, on what is meant to be a short break from the madness, Goodwin receives a request to meet to discuss a proposition. She agrees, though reluctantly and the rest is history. Her team is to go to the quarantined world of DSJ-1020 and rescue the lover of rich business man, Roman Fade. The eccentric painter ran off, but now playtime is over, and it’s time to come home. As any fan of the Alien franchise will know, a Weland-Yutani quarantine is never what it seems. And it’s never good. This one is no different.
The set up for this took a little long for my taste, not only is it a slow burn, but it is also a set up that could be seen in any space opera adjacent story—even Star Wars. The down-on-their-luck space crew takes on a dangerous mission is tried and true, but this one did take hundreds of pages to get moving. Now, by no means does slow equate to bad, at least in this case. There’s romance and strife, dangerous, pulse pounding storms and a crash. I was just waiting for the true Alien format to kick in. At least personally.
Once the team has crash landed, Goodwin begins reading through the dossier of Corinth Bloch, the artist they were contracted to rescue. This introduced this unique sort of novella inside the novel that I found interesting. On the one hand, I do wish that it was implemented a bit differently, as it adds on to what then feels like a few 10k words chapters that really hinder the pace of the crew’s story. With that being said, I was entranced in this mock-memoir format and frankly couldn’t get enough of it. Bloch is a tragically tormented character, his eccentricities borne from a life of loss and from staring into the darkness and seeing something stare back.
The ending did pick up speed, which made me happy. We have what feels like a reunion at that point (even though they’ve never met) as the captain finds Bloch. While the story does deliver on some facehuggers and xenomorphs, it never fully felt like an Alien installment to me although at the same time I thoroughly enjoyed it and would even read a follow up. In the same way Predator: Badlands (to me) didn’t feel like it delivered fans Predator, this was a really good, even emotional, space exploration novel. This felt halfway Prometheus-existential and halfway Alien-horror/action, the blend of which worked for a read, I think I just wanted more spaceship horror.
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