Wednesday, May 27, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy/Horror Book Review: Alien: Echo by Mira Grant


Alien: Echo is a book meant for a different audience than me - after all it's a YA SciFi Horror Novel written in the "Alien" universe and I am: 1) In my 30s; 2) Not the biggest fan of horror; and 3) have never seen any of the "Alien" movies.  The first isn't really a problem (god knows I've loved a lot of YA recently) but the other 2 are a bit trickier: I've enjoyed a few horror novels but don't really go seeking them out unless I have special reason too and well, with my knowledge of "Alien" coming entirely from pop culture, it's very possible I'm missing a lot of background/tie-in information for rthe book.  Still, it was written by Mira Grant - aka Seanan McGuire, who is one of my favorite writers and it was available in audiobook from Hoopla, so I gave it a shot.

And well, Alien: Echo is fine, but it didn't really do much for me.  It features a strong lead character with a solid sisterly relationship that is enjoyable, and a queer love interest who....mostly works, although it is honestly too short to really cement these relationships as much as I'd like.  And then the Alien connection comes through in a way that will probably entertain horror fans, and well if you like horror you'll probably enjoy the carnage that results, but with the exception of one moment, it never really does anything but hit the horror "bullet points".  Add that all up to an ending that is a massive cliffhanger and isn't really that satisfying, and well, it's fine...but not a book I would recommend except to big YA Horror and probably "Alien" fans.


-----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Olivia Shipp is 17 and hates most of living on Zagreus - the colonists who are stuck up with their ideas of not interfering even interacting with the planet's nature and live inside what might as well be a shell, the world's orange sky, and how she's treated by the colonists' kids as an outsider.  But as one of the twin daughters of two of the most knowledgeable xenobiologists in the galaxy, she has no choice but to follow them as their work takes them to more and more obscure colony worlds, and so she makes do.  Fortunately she still has her sick twin sister - her closest friend - Viola and has found some fascinating things in the world's biology.  Oh and then there's Kora, the colony girl who Olivia is besotted with, who might just be coming over to the family lab soon for, dare she hope it, a date?

But when a colony initiative goes wrong, Zagreus suddenly finds itself under attack from an unheard of alien threat, with the colony entirely unprepared for what follows.  In the process, Olivia will be forced to deal with family secrets she could not have imagined, with no time whatsoever to stop and process their implications.  For if Olivia, and those she cares for, wants to survive, she'll have to take desperate measures, and every inch of her family training, to get off the planet alive....or else.
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As an "Alien" book, there are certain things you know are going to happen in this novel.  The Aliens are going to arrive at some point, they're almost certainly going to kill a lot of people and impregnate them with their spawn, and our heroes are going to be desperate to survive.  There's a reason I put that in the plot summary above even though it doesn't occur through halfway through the book: it's going to happen so it's not a surprise.  So what we're looking for here are two things: whether the human characters in this novel are effective and interesting so that we care what happens for them and whether the alien attack is interesting in itself and not just more of the same.

Our protagonist is definitely our most interesting character, and she works really well: Olivia is the daughter of two xenobiologists, and totally gets her love of finding new creatures and beings from them, even if she also hates having to constantly travel to distant colony planets where the populace treats them like dirt.  She loves her sister fervently and her goal in a year is to use her new age of majority to move closer to Earth with her sister so she can try and get her sister the health care Olivia feels her parents have failed to acquire.  And well, she's a typical 17 year old girl, who wants to move into adulthood and have a relationship, in this case with her current crush: colony girl Kora.  She's determined, smart, and lovable and well again feels real for her age, so it's really easy to follow her.

There are 3 other characters who get any development: Viola, Olivia's twin sister is a sick girl who needs constant machine support to survive, but whose wisecracking chemistry with Olivia makes for a firm relationship that is very easy to believe; Kora, Olivia's colony girl love interest who may or may not reciprocate that interest; and Michel, the jealous colony boy who's kind of a jerk and makes some bad decisions that naturally will have consequences down the road.  Viola works really well, but I wish the book had a longer page time for Kora, who the book still is sort of developing and casting doubt upon by the time the horror starts to occur - the romance works but appears kind of jarring without that extra page time.  Like we learn a major character trait for Kora just before the final act that I'd have loved to know beforehand to understand more of who Kora is and why she may be attracted to Olivia.

Alas, these are the only four characters who get any development, and as such, when the Aliens come, the horror story only has limited targets to kill who I had any feeling about.  And well, it results in the book's plot being a lot less effective than it could be: the first half of the book is spent teasing out a reveal that any genre savvy reader will suspect (some variant of at least) practically right away, and the second half features the attempt to survive the aliens, and well, I didn't care about most of the victims.  And with the exception of one moment - in which the characters encounter another survivor who is not in a right way - the alien invasion is just pretty standard "Alien" stuff, without much intrigue, right down to the final confrontation.  If you loved that from the movies, you may love it here, for me, it didn't do much.  And it ends in a cliffhangery ending which only makes it less satisfying, especially as I don't see a sequel scheduled to be published.

In short, if you're not an Alien fan, Alien: Echo won't change your mind.  If you are, you may find it enjoyable and even there I'm not sure it does enough to truly make it a must read.  And if you're just a general horror fan, I think you could probably do a lot better.  The book isn't bad, it's just not great either.
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