Book Review: Aliens: Earth Hive

Title: Aliens: Earth Hive
Author: Steve Perry
Genre: Military Sci-Fi, Horror
Trep's Rating: 3 Stars

I've loved the Aliens franchise forever. I don't know just what it is about them, but at least for the first two movies, I just can't get enough of them. Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately, judging from the way the last two movies in that franchise went) they aren't making anymore movies that follow that storyline.

Which is why I love books. Book one in this series is pretty much what I expected it to be. A nitty-gritty Alien adventure.

Earth Hive starts years after the incidents in the first two movies. It follows two characters, a colonial marine named Wilks and a young woman named Billie. Wilks managed to survive and escape an Alien infestation on one of the outlying colonies, and Billie, then a little girl, was the only one he managed to save.

He gets assigned to be part of a top-secret mission to go and collect intelligence about this threat. The government thinks that they have found the Alien home world. (It was at this point I started getting excited)

They take off, intent on quickly completing their mission. Until a mercenary attacks them and takes them prisoner. See, the government isn't the only ones who know about the aliens, and some groups are willing to pay a lot of money for samples. The mercenary plans to use the marines as bait. Once on the alien world, he will wait until the marines have been "facehugged" and implanted with baby aliens. Then he will haul them up using androids, put them in cryo, and head back to earth.

Another group enters the story. A religious cult intent on worshiping the aliens xenomorphs. To them, being facehugged is the same a becoming one with their god. They are intent on getting a facehugger loose and breeding them on earth.

All in all, this is a fun ride. It's short, moves quickly, and is just a good story. Content Warning: Lot's of profanity, space boinking, and sci-fi violence.