Alien: Colony War, by David Barnett

Alien: Colony War is a classical Alien story in the "Aliens / Predator / Prometheus Universe": state, corporate and military corruption and greed, individual bravery and struggle, xenomorphs and mothers willing to protect their children, the occasional psychopath. Entertaining. I feel the author understands and respects the Alien universe. Alien has a successful recipe, one that unlike other franchises, no one yet tried to deconstruct, reinvent or turn into something else. Yes, I am also talking about Alien: Earth, if you look into it, it's the same story. I am talking about a world filled with despondency: indentured human work, a cold corporate profit driven mentality in the ones holding most resources, a general callousness towards loss of human life, monstrous viscerally terrifying monsters. And in this world, there is the human (and sometime synthetic) individual spirit of survival, decency and bravery. And the feelings evoked by this kind of scenario are also pretty formulaic: a…