Alien: Isolation (Alien: Isolation #0)

Annabel_Hawkins

Rating: really liked it
I'm so very excited for this story to get the fleshing out that it deserves but some of the rumors about Zula's involvement worry me a little. The Defiance comic was one of my favorite Alien-verse comic arcs of all time, and I really hope that her character isn't altered from how she appeared there. Her and Davis's characters (and Amanda's personality as well) are getting glossed over with so little detail or care in the current Resistance arc...

And Amanda Ripley is really special to me as a character: for having so little back story and on-screen dialogue in the game, the writers of Isolation's cutscenes managed to create a very real and solid character. Honestly, the whole speaking cast seemed very solid and movie-script ready with clear motives and personalities: Waits as an antagonist who still had in mind "for the greater good," Ricardo who's loyalty to rules ends up turned over in place of interest of survival but never wavering from good intentions, Samuels the android who was willing to lose everything just to give Amanda a sense of closure, Taylor the young and ambitious legal rep from the Company with a secret--they've all been there for four years waiting for a film, or a book and I'm so glad that they're finally getting one.

Plus in Out of Shadows (I think that was the one?) it was established that Ellen Ripley's parents had a house in France? And I know that canon isn't really a concept in the Alien comics and novels but I had really hoped that considering how close together the release dates of all the recent material have been, that there would be SOME continuity...

Fingers crossed that DeCandido will do this justice and the copyright holders that commissioned it (I'm assuming Fox and Creative Studios?) gave him enough free reign to do something great with it.

I'm also likely going to preorder a copy in, or even just request that my store has it short listed so I can get it on the release day.

EDIT: FULL REVIEW TO COME.

Dawie

Rating: really liked it
I do not like the whole “ lets have a flashback” every chapter to buffer a story you clobbed together from a game that was a lot better. Maybe im too much of a Ellen Ripley fan not to give Amanda a chance.

Ben Brown

Rating: really liked it
In the surprisingly long litany of popular-videogames-turned-novel-adaptations, there aren’t a TON that most would classify as being ‘good’…and unfortunately, ‘Alien: Isolation’ isn’t an exception. Author Keith R.A. DeCandido does a credible enough job of layering in a decent degree of emotional exposition that wasn’t as present in the actual game, and the character of Amanda Ripley feels distinctly more fleshed out here, which is a plus. Unfortunately, too much of the book boils down to a stock re-presentation of the game’s events, with Amanda having to go to Location #1 to retrieve this item, then visit Location #2 to give said item to someone, then visit Location #3 else to activate some random thing….you get the drift. In game-form, this type of narrative works well enough; in book-form, it’s unfortunately a bit of a chore. There’s good stuff here, and for ‘Isolation’ completists, it might be worth a read to just get the full scope of Amanda’s character. For anyone else, however, this is a pretty easy skip.

Margaret Goodell

Rating: really liked it
Disappointing, way too many flashbacks to childhood and teenage angst, even the parts with the alien were dull.

Lacey

Rating: really liked it
I loved the game, even though I didn't beat it. I got too scared. lol! Maybe one day I'll finish it. But I loved the book too. It had me holding my breath with anxiety on some parts. This was a book I couldn't wait to keep going back to when I had to stop and deal with "life" things.

Quinn D.K.

Rating: really liked it
I was really looking forward to this, an adaptation of an incredible videogame based on one of my favourite franchises of all time. Unfortunately, the book inherits many of the flaws of the game, namely a shallow, unevenly paced story and uninteresting characters.

Personally, I was eager to see how the author would translate the game's impeccable sense of tension and dread into prose form. However, having read the final product, that didn't seem to be much of a priority. There is only the barest sense of atmosphere. Enemies that are formidable and fearsome in the game are severely downplayed in the book. Little details are weirdly off, too: the Working Joes are described as having purple skin, and the brunette Amanda is described as blonde? Might have been understandable if the author was working off of prototypes and concept art, but the game was released nearly 5 years ago.

Speaking of which, the way Amanda was handled was another letdown. The flashbacks detailing her past are repetitive and largely superfluous to the main story. All the flashbacks say the exact same thing: Amanda has been taken advantage of by others and she doesn't trust other people. This is fine once or twice, but it didn't need to be reinstated as often as it did throughout the story, since it only served to interrupt the present narrative and didn't offer anything insightful or new to Amanda's characterization.

I don't envy the task of an author who has to condense a large game into a readable, 300 page novel. But I feel like this was a missed opportunity - it's just not scary or engaging like the game, and it doesn't improve upon the weak story and characters.

Amy Walker - Trans-Scribe Reviews

Rating: really liked it
I have a little confession to make, I've never been able to finish playing Alien Isolation. I've had it since it was released in 2014, and have tried finishing it at least once a year since, but it's just way too scary for me. As such, when it was announced that Titan were releasing a novelisation I was over the moon, as I'd finally get to find out how the story of Amanda Ripley would end.

Whilst this is an adaptation of the game, Keith R.A. Decandido adds a lot more to the story, exploring Amanda's past and filling in a lot of the gaps to her story. Not only do we get to see her having to face off against the killer alien, but we see how the loss of her mother affected her life growing up.

Ripley having a daughter was a major character beat that was cut out of Aliens, and it was a shame as it gave a lot more context to her relationship with Newt. Since the release of the special edition fans have been wanting to know more about Ripley and her daughter, and this novelisation gives us the most insight to date.

We get to see Ripley and Amanda before the events of the original movie, where she's a mother trying her best to support her daughter despite her long distance job that takes her away from home for months at a time. We discover that despite the rocky relationship with Amanda's step-father, Ripley always tries to do the best she can by her daughter, and loves her deeply.

Once Ripley and the Nostromo disappear we learn the affect this had on Amanda. We discover that her whole adolescence was shaped by this disaster, and that the pain of her loss never left her. Whilst this is included to a small degree in the game here it becomes a focal point. It's not just the motivation for Amanda travelling to Sevastopol station, but something that shaped her entire life.

Amanda was left in a less than ideal home situation, living with an alcoholic step-father who can't get his shit together. This leads to her being unable to finish her education and becoming a full engineer, which limited her employment options and effectively left her poor her entire life. Ripley's disappearance began a cascade of events that led Amanda to coming face to face with the same creatures that took her mother away from her.

Decandido doesn't just build this new backstory, but has the difficult job of condensing down the whole game-play scenario into a story that wont leave readers bored. Whilst walking through countless corridors for hours on end worked for the game, thanks in large part to the massive levels of tension the game built, it wasn't going to make an entertaining read. Thankfully, the books narrative is able to capture a lot of this atmosphere, and hits all of the major beats of the game.

This doesn't just include the big story moments, which of course would be included, but little things like the scrawled graffiti players find on the walls, Amanda making smoke-bombs out of scrap materials, and having to collect tools to progress through the station. Sometimes game adaptations can feel like poor novels as the writers work hard to include as much of the game-play experience as they can. I found this to be true in the Resident Evil novel series, where the game adaptations were not quite as good as the stories that the writer was able to craft themselves. Thankfully, this kind of thing didn't happen here, largely thanks to the inclusion of all of the backstory segments.

Whether you're like me, and haven't been able to complete the game, or someone who has experienced the whole thing there's something for everyone in this adaptation. The book takes the source material and doesn't just adapt it, but expands upon it to give an even bigger experience. An ideal read for Alien fans and those that enjoy horror.

Andrew Johnson

Rating: really liked it
It works well in the first half as it sets the stage and establishes Amanda Ripley’s backstory. I actually didn’t mind the flashbacks. In fact, I think I would have preferred a novel just about Amanda doing… well, not this. The second half is a bit of a slog, moving from “level to level” with very little atmosphere or sense of dramatic rhythm. It feels like a summary of a video game… without any of the tension one gets from playing a video game.

Corey Campbell

Rating: really liked it
3.5 ⭐️

I really enjoyed this book for what it is: an adaptation of a video game’s story. It zipped along and was fun to read, but was no great piece of literature. It’s plotted like a video game and it doesn’t seem like much work was done to change that, and the ending was particularly bleak. I did enjoy that bit.

If you like Alien, etc. you’ll enjoy this grim re-telling of a great game that I could just never quite finish.

James Big Cat

Rating: really liked it
Wow this really felt like a sequel to the original story. Don't get me wrong Aliens is great and I love it but it's got a completely different atmosphere than Alien.

Alien Isolation gives us the best of both worlds. You get the tense isolated horror of the Alien stalking Amanda in the beginning and more action-packed race against time twords the end.
I also liked the use of the "Joe's" (semi mindless drones, instead of Androids like Ash or Bishop) and other survivors to keep the tension up between Alien encounters.
The segments between chapters where they talk about Amanda's past where okay, not super exciting or really insightful towards the universe itself. They're more of a look at her life specifically which was really depressing because I know a lot of people that were basically Amanda growing up (minus the whole xenomorph thing).

Darth Dragonetti

Rating: really liked it
Alien book publishing has gone through a sort of renaissance in the past few years, due in large part to the solid effort of the people at Titan Publishing. Authors like Tim Lebbon, Christopher Golden, Alex White, Alan Dean Foster and now Keith R.A. DeCandido have been publishing some real powerhouse novels that are fun to read and add to Alien lore in exciting ways. Now, enter Alien Isolation, the 2014 videogame. Taking a cue from a most interesting deleted scene from the film "Aliens," Isolation tells the story of Ripley's daughter, and her search for her missing mother following the events of the first Alien film. While well-received, the game did not sell extremely well, and interest in developing sequels ground to a halt. But surprise! Five years later--out of nowhere-- we get a novelization of the game. It's curious, and I ask "why now?" Better late than never, I suppose.

NOTE: If you haven't played the videogame, fear not! The novelization works very well on its own, and you will still have a great reading experience.

The plot of the novel follows the story beats from the game quite closely. However, there is a lot of added content to the book, and some of this new content is actually the most interesting. The novel begins by relaying the story of the Anesidora and how it comes to pick up the flight recorder and alien creature. I was glad this story was told in one cohesive section at the beginning of the novel, rather than being broken up, as it was in the game. There is also a substantial amount of story content with Amanda Ripley that takes place before she is recruited to tag along on the journey to Sevastopol Station. This extra content has some really interesting info about Ellen and Amanda Ripley's personal lives that was heretofore unknown to me. The extra scenes really help the reader understand the psyche of Amanda in particular, what makes her tick, and why she is so jaded.

The novel is well-written and moves a good clip. Author DeCandido does a good of following the plot of the game while also truncating exploration as needed, so you won't have to read extended sequences of people hiding in lockers, reading emails on computers, etc. The game exuded a strong sense of mood, and the author emulates this very well in the book. He is also quite faithful to Alien source material at large, and obviously has a strong grasp on the universe. I was delighted with the novel's characterization, particularly that of the protagonist, Amanda. DeCandido really turns the two-dimensional character from the game into a compelling specimen. Amanda's caustic sense of humor is priceless. I also appreciated the author re-working the ending, which in the game was underwhelming.

While the flashback scenes were entertaining and informative, I found they did slow the action, perhaps intentionally? I would've preferred more fleshing out of the main storyline over the flashback scenes, which occasionally felt shoehorned in. Other than that, my complaints were few.

Alien fan? Looking for a dynamite read? Stop reading this stupidly long review and go pick up the novel, already! Kudos to Keith R.A. DeCandido for writing a novel that succeeds on many fronts: as great novelization, great Alien tie-in, and great science fiction. The Alien: Isolation novelization is a wonderful expansion of the lore we love, and hope to see more coming soon!

NOTE: NOTE: You'll be hungry for a sequel after reading the novel. The sequel is told in the form of a comic--Aliens: Resistance, which is available in one volume or four separate shorter volumes. There is also another comic about Zula Hendricks, which is called Aliens: Defiance. It is available in two volumes or as eight shorter volumes. Confusing, I know!

Juanita

Rating: really liked it
Got the book since I suck at videogames, but really wanted to know what happened here.
The concept is good (clearly, as it made for a fantastic game), but the execution is cluncky. The style really didn't do much for me, it reads like a not-so good fanfiction.

Ursula Johnson

Rating: really liked it
Not as Good as the Original Alien Trilogy Books

I am a fan of the Alien series, especially the books, audiobooks and audio dramas. I am not a gamer and am not familiar with the Isolation story. I'm coming to this particular story as a newbie.

Amanda shares many traits with her mother and I enjoy the the fact that she is an engineer in all but name. Parts of the backstory were interesting, but became tedious after a while. Part of this were implausible as well. Lots of moving through vents of the crazy infected station. Little food or rest and constantly having to keep going. This just didn't hold my interest the way Alien books normally do. The encrypted transmission communications between didn't really pick up until nearly the end of the book. There were so many different things happening, it got difficult to follow. The machinations of the company are some of my favorite parts of the Alien books. Little of that is here. I also don't feel the immersion in a future world like I normally do. The Alien Covenant prequel book was a great book that really gave a sense of how the company operates. The book didn't so much as end, but stop, leaving the possibility of another book. I read this book using immersion reading while listening to the audio book. The narrator was ok, I would've preferred the excellent Tom Taylorson who did both Covenant books. This book was just meh for me.

Mr Chuck

Rating: really liked it
Felt like it was written by two people.

Ah I really enjoyed the start of this book, I was glued for the first 100 pages. Nice details of what Ripleys daughter was doing and the build up to the alien.

However, it just seemed to be written by someone else as the story progressed. The awe and horror of the alien was gone, no build up or tense. It become more of "you know what the alien is, so I won't discribe it and just skip past it so can carry on the adventure".

I understand the flash backs but it should at the start of a story not halfway during a intense scene. It kills all forward momentum.

I'll just end saying that if you love Aliens it's interesting to read what happend to Ripleys daughter but you'll find her an annoying, huffy teenager and the story has No horror element.

It's told more as if a idea being written instead of building a story with excitement and thrill. Like a mate telling you what happens in a horror film then going to watch and experiencing it yourself.

SOTERO RIVERA

Rating: really liked it
Just OK. Should have been better written.

This book was a bit of a disappointment even though it was a little entertaining. The fact that it was based on the hugely popular video games raised the bar high. I'm surprised that the editors and the publisher didn't tackle the issue of the book's lackluster writing. Some of it was so bad, I almost stopped reading it a couple of times.
The storyline was scattered and the plot was ambiguous. The characters were not very believable, especially Rippley's daughter. I just felt it needed something extra. Like making a sauce for a dish and not using the right ingredients and spices.
This is disappointing considering that most of the Alien books have been phenomenal.