Brian Ledwell

Some guy and a tagline

Alien: Out of the Shadows

"Painful, well produced trainwreck"

Narrated by: Rutger Hauer, Corey Johnson, Matthew Lewis, Kathryn Drysdale, Laurel Lefkow, Andrea Deck, Mac McDonald

There are things the description does NOT tell you about the story that could influence your decision on if you want to spend the time with it. BTW.. no spoilers here (the story is so shallow you don't need them).

  1. Ripley is a character
  2. It takes place after the first movie on LV-426 and before she's rescued (before events on the second movie).

Just take a second and imagine what that means. How does the events of this story fit in with the continuity of overall storyline? Now imagine how this story might end in the most unsatisfying easy way possible. Don't put much thought into it.... You got it! You already how how they end this and how they tie in this story with the over all Alien plot lines. The only thing you don't know are the details which pretty much follow same plot line from "Aliens" just on a different world and different cardboard people.

With Ripley involved theres very little at steak and and not much tension. The characters are the same disposable characters you've seen in any of the other Alien stories you've read. I would have had more respect and more enjoyment if she had never been included at all.

Ok some positive things (there aren't many). They do try and expand the "the company" storyline and bit with a tiny bit of history, well "history" might be a bit much, they give you some more insight into "the company". Theres a single character that might be interesting to hear more about but I doubt it will go anywhere.

This is the most unbalanced audio book Ive listened to. They put a ton of time, and effort into the production. The voice talent is excellent and they spent a lot of time on the sound effects and music, but for this story, why?! And while Im on the subject of production why have sound effects at all? Im a bit on the fence about adding music to audio books. I really just want to hear the voice actors. In general adding music to make situations feel more dire just feels .. I donno. cheap.

This is by far the harshest review Ive given an audio book yet. I didn't despise the book. Im not asking for a refund or anything its just a disappointment how safe and terribly predictable the storyline is. Its a disservice to the overall story. It should be scary, you could care about the characters and have some surprises and learn more about the universe the story takes place in. Theres non of that in this book. Its like eating iceburg lettuce. Theres NOTHING in it.