Bruce's Reviews > Alien: The Cold Forge

This licensed spinoff isn't bad throughout, but it does suffer some structural problems and an ending that goes completely off the rails. The setup is straightforward enough. The Cold Forge is a remote, privately-owned-and-operated secret weapons development station with three projects in simultaneous development: a super-virus programmed to infect and destroy any computer infrastructure, some kind of long-range transmitter jammer/disabler, and enough xenomorphs and egg cases to start a hive. It is artificially maintained in close orbit around an especially intense star.

The setting is effectively a timebomb set for spectacular self-destruction, the only questions being when, how, and under what circumstances anyone will survive. Fine. The cast is the usual roster of nonplayer characters and cannon fodder necessary to populate an unfolding disaster, plus two primary antagonists through whom the majority of the story is told: scientist Blue Marsalis, researching the face-huggers for a genetic cure-all opposed by Dorian Sudler, a sociopathic Weyland Yutani inspector general. The antagonism here is natural, if wholly artificial -- there is no reason for Marsalis to be keeping the purpose of her potentially lucrative experiments secret from her employer, and it's a bit much for the corporation to have thrown a borderline-murderous psychopathic investigator at this expensive powder keg -- but since these facts serve as the premises and catalysts of White's plot, it's pointless to complain about them. This is the ride. Get on board or leave the book behind.

The author handles his material competently if without subtlety.

No one has ever slapped him before, and the urge to retaliate is instantaneous. Heat rises in his breast, and he sucks in a breath. he wants to strike her back, to break her against the bulkhead and wrap his hands around her slender throat. He wants to crush her fucking skull -- but then he remembers their wild sex and thinks better of it....

"We're going to discuss this when we get back to the ship," he whispers.

"What, are you going to fire me some more?" She rises to a low crouch and grabs him by the wrist.

He smirks. "Maybe you can get your job back."(Pages 188-9)

His two-dimensional characters exist in a Cold Forge environment whose layout and function are nonetheless clearly delineated and coherent. My primary disappointment here has to do with the structure White imposes on his narrative, a disservice of three distinct, fully-realized arcs, each of which reach a natural conclusion that require an external triggering event to resume. Because they are not organically intertwined, the closure of each act undermines the pacing and intrigue of the story as a whole, effectively turning it into three books, the third and final of which is so unbelievable as to be laughably silly.

Book #1 concerns the auditor's hamfisted investigation. It's okay. Not terribly exciting or intriguing, but the introduction to the leads and the setting are sufficient to sustain interest. Book #2 chronicles events that follow the release of the caged xenomorphs into the station. This part is hit-or-miss and would be better served by characters in whom the reader had more of a rooting interest, but there's plenty of monster and survival story fun. As mentioned, it also suffers by failing to proceed naturally from the immediately precedent action. This, too, reaches a natural end-state if not an equilibrium state with about 100 pages to go and leads to an artificial turning point at which the author quits on his three star endeavor by inexplicably having the two principals abandon the goals that have driven them the entire book in pursuit of an absurd mano a mano final battle that forms the substance of book #3. From here the narrative devolves into a violent, simplistic cartoon. Adding insult to injury are a pair of epilogues: a "and then I awoke from my nightmare" fake twist ending, followed by five pages that impart a superfluous moral.

What I am here calling book #2 are pages 145-347. That's the ride and the sole reason to buy your ticket. I would skim the first 144 pages to get a gist for the setup and then skip everything after page 348 (if you must, just make up your own ending). The xenomorph universe of Alien offers authors fertile ground for storytelling that White largely fails to exploit.