Finally got a chance to read the third book in this Aliens omnibus: The Female War, by Steve Perry and Stephani Perry. Every time I read one of these, I learn something new, and this time it was that these books--all three of them--were novelizations of comic books, and not the other way around, as I thought when I reviewed the first two.
Anyway, this book continues the story of Billie and Wilks, with surprise ending guest from the previous book, Ripley! People are having a new kind of dream about the aliens on Gateway station, and this book is about figuring out what the dreams mean and what can be done about them.
It's well-written for the most part, and this is one of the "smoothest" reads I've gone through in a while. It's not even ten pages shorter than the previous two books, but it was incredibly easy to just read the whole thing in pretty much one sitting.
We get the usual solid prose, but also there's more attention paid to descriptions of characters. The character descriptions also seem to sometimes come about a paragraph later than you would expect. Maybe this is influence from Stephani Perry's style?
We get a lot of new characters in this book, and many of them even survive to the end! Character development is a little rudimentary but present; think about how the marines in the Aliens movie were developed, and you've got a pretty good idea. Short intros, a little bit of backstory, a few interpersonal conflicts, and you have a decent cast of characters.
On the minus side, some of the attention to detail on the characters planning out what they're going to do is lacking, and there are a few plot points that I found hard to believe.
For full spoilers, check the Spoiler Section of the embedded videos.
Also, there is enough salacious content in the book that reader discretion may be advisable.
Grab a copy here if you'd like to check it out!
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