Mankind's first encounter with the Aliens. Sounds interesting? Yeah it is, but.... on the other hand it's nothing more than another Aliens novel. Crew comes, aliens come, blood, screaming, death, survivors escape. If you like it, if you're a fan, it's for you. Everyone else go and see the films! :-) ( )

A look at one of the first encounters with the xenomorph. Based on what was implied from the first film, Humans and the alien have met befor. The company knew about the alien befor the Nostromo intercepted the beacon on LV426.
A derilect ship in orbit around a moon of Saturn is discovered and it's a race between two nations on Earth to lay claim to it. The eggs are discovered and you can guess the rest. It's a decent addition to the Aliens series. ( )

Aliens: Steel Egg certainly starts out with an interesting premise: It is assumed that the Weyland-Yutani company already knew a little about the alien in the first Alien film. Where did they get their information?

Steel Egg then, is about humanity’s first encounter with those pesky skeletal xenomorphs.

The crew of The Hornblower has been sent to investigate a large metallic deposit on Saturn’s moon Iepetus. The ‘ore deposit’ turns out to be a large, egg-shaped, derelict alien vessel. You can guess what they find inside.

John Shirley constructs a very good plot in this novel. In addition to the mystery of the steel egg and battling face-huggers, there’s a side plot about a Chinese vessel with sinister intentions due to arrive on the scene at any moment.

This was a storyline with a lot of potential, however, I was not very impressed with this novel. It seemed like a good concept not handled very well. John Shirley may be a good writer, but he's not demonstrating it here. And the problems didn't seem related to it being a tie-in novel. The writing just seemed lackluster and the villain ruined the book whenever he was present.

The characters overall aren’t too bad. There’s a little bit of background for each and the captain had some depth to him. There were maybe too many characters to really keep track of and most of them were pretty one dimensional. For instance, there is a medic named O’Neil. Though we are told he is a medic, he never seems to do anything with it. When medical stuff comes up, a new character is introduced and I was wondering ‘What about O’Neil?’ The only purpose O’Neil seems to serve is as a shivering coward.

The biggest problem I had (the one that really kept me from enjoying the book) was with the character of Reynolds, the xenobiologist. As the main 'bad guy' character he is so paper thin he doesn't even have two dimensions. Every other line he spoke ended with an exclamation mark. He reminded me of a Snidely Whiplash-type character twisting is handlebar moustache while he ties the damsel to the railroad tracks. Perhaps it would have helped if at some point the author had shown him in a more sympathetic light.

I'm not expecting James Joyce when I pick up a book inspired by Aliens, but I would at least like characters that are up to the 'standards' set by an Arnold Schwarzenegger film.

Steel Egg does improve a bit (mainly because that aggravating character is 'off stage' for a time) about a third of the way through. Near the end, Reynolds is back and things go downhill again.

If you were thinking of trying this one I'd say go ahead. There is some fun to be had here, though you'll have to stick with it till about a third of the way through before it picks up steam and the SuperFriends type villain really hurts the book. ( )