(pb; 2017: book-only prequel
to Alan Dean Foster’s 2017 movie tie-in novelization of Alien: Covenant)
From the back cover
“The Covenant mission is the most ambitious endeavor in the history of Weyland-Yutani. A ship bound for Origae-6, carrying two thousand colonists beyond the limits of known space, this is a make-or-break investment for the corporation—and for the future of mankind.
“Yet there are those who would
die to stop the mission. As the colony ship hovers in Earth orbit, several
violent events reveal a deadly conspiracy to sabotage the launch. While Captain
Jacob Branson and his wife Daniels complete their preparations, security chief
Daniel Lupé recruits the final key member of his team. Together they seek to
stop the perpetrators before the ship and its passengers.
Review
This official prequel to the events of Alien: Covenant (2017; director: Ridley Scott) is a well-written but superfluous, fill-in-all-the-timeline-blanks work. Foster, a consistently solid-to-great author, penned a solid novella-length story with solid characters—a few of whom appear in Scott’s Alien: Covenant, e.g., Daniels, Tennessee and Lupé. Unfortunately, Covenant—Origins isn’t a novella, it’s a novel, with a story that feels lightweight, character and event-wise, compared to the bigger-in-scope Alien works, an entertaining but overlong trifle in a series studded with some excellent entries, cinema and book-wise.
I’d recommend Covenant—Origins if you’re a die-hard/completist fan of the Alien franchise, looking for story- and character expansions you won’t get in the films and other books. This is a worthwhile read, if you’re of those mindsets and keep your expectations of Covenant—Origin’s stakes relatively low, and enjoy sporadic bits of gunplay/action, corporate intrigue, roughshod revolutionaries (the Earthsavers), and don’t expect a lot of monsters (besides those clawed shadow-things in Duncan’s apoplectic nightmares).
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