"If it isn't one thing, it's another. Out of the hurricane and into a tornado." - Wilks

Corporal Wilks is a colonial marine on the slide after surviving the horrors of an alien outbreak on Rim world. The top brass call him in for a meeting with a civilian research organisation who want to journey to the alien home world to bring back samples for possible military exploitation. Naturally, this being a competitive Universe, there are also other parties interested in the possible commercial benefits of alien physiology, who are prepared to go to any lengths to gain an advantage over all perceived competitors.

Along for the ride is Billie, the only other survivor of Rim, who Wilks rescued from a mental hospital where they were trying to suppress her memories of the alien conflagration. Can Wilks, Billie, and a company of Colonial Marines survive a fifth column within, a vicious corporate warrior, and of course the aliens, to gain back their sanity? And just how did an Alien queen arrive on Earth, and can she and her brood be contained in a corporate laboratory with a growing Alien Sect hammering at the doors? Drop your linen and start your grinning, Dark Horse go novelisation on us.

Dark Horse naturally saw the benefits in the Alien universe and brought the publishing rights from Fox Studios for both comics and books. Remembering here that Alien was the creation of script Writers and not the result of an existing book or series of books. Naturally Fox had already published their own novelizations of the movies, to be reviewed watch this space, but must have been overjoyed to leverage some more cash from one of their better franchises. Dark Horse were not above doing a bit of leveraging in their own right and published both comic and novel representations of the same base stories, it can get confusing when talking amongst Alien fans as to which property you are alluding to in conversation. Anyways we're hitting the jump ship and covering all angles of the Alien universe, lock and load people.

Earth Hive is set in the Alien universe sometime after events in James Cameron's Aliens, and envisages human contact with the bugs being still sporadic with naturally the military and commercial organisations seeing benefits to one of the more darker elements out of space. Ripley and crew are alluded to, but the book runs in parallel to events in the movies, so yes you can rock on into the Dark Horse novels without having an in depth knowledge of cinematic happenings, the plot is pretty much self-contained though there is naturally room left for a sequel as the final paragraph goes down. All you really need to know are the Aliens exist as sort of the older gods' Dobermans let off the leash, and it never works out well when humans enter their orbit.

Surprisingly, considering the early Dark Horse novels are written by gun for hire Steve Perry, Earth HiveAvP movies turned out to be. While the prose isn't likely to win any awards or go on School curriculums, the novel still rocks along like an afternoon at the pub and I rocketed through from first page to last in a few hours of getting my Alien on. Perry sure knows how to write an action sequence, and although at times the drama threatens to bog things down the Author keeps it strictly on the backburner and uses it to provide character motivation. Actually Perry is probably doing a better job than most novelists, there's enough character development to have no one acting out of their determined character motivations. I'm giving two thumbs up for the writing style and pacing, Perry knows what he is about here, and makes every post a winner as he puts his Colonial Marines into harm's way.

For those after some development on the Alien mythos, there are a couple of injections that should have you grinning from ear to ear. The Colonial Marines get some in depth coverage, I'm not going to provide any spoilers here, read the book to get the good oil on some special forces the Marines have available. And the Space Jockey gets a Guernsey, seems it was a member of an advance race with a psychotic hatred of the Aliens, and has weapons far superior to those available back here on Earth. Perry ensures that there is ample scope for the species to take center stage in later books.

About the only criticism I would ladle onto Earth Hive is the source of the outbreak of hostilities on Rim. Seems the Space Jockeys have a major issue with Aliens getting loose on-board their ships, as yet again it's due to a chest burster than a Space Jockey vessel has crashed landed on Rim eons ago with a deadly cargo. Anyone saying, "hang about wasn't that the premise of Alien" gets the cupid doll, come on Perry something original was in order not simply regurgitating previous plot lines.

So overall I'm putting Earth Hive into the guilty pleasure basket, and for sure I'll be checking out later Steve Perry novels in the series. We're talking a light read here that should have most people who pick up the book slurping through the pages in a few hours while getting their alien on. For the most part I would recommend this book to Alien fans, though if you like Space Opera with monsters then dial in Perry has your back. If you're more a serious dark genre consumer then this isn't the one for you.

I picked up my review copy of Earth Hive from Amazon for a pretty special price, under ten dollars kids - talk about your bangs for your buck. Anyone else noticing Amazon are getting lightning fast in the delivery Downunder? Get in quick before the State Government here in NSW once again rain on everyone's parade by putting a new tax on imports, talk about attempting to strip every ounce of joy out of life. Okay moving along, Dark Horse have a website for your edification right about here, check out some of the offerings and let us know if there is anything else cool to sink our fangs into.