Aliens cold forge download free

This theme is is summed up in one of my favorite quotes from the second movie: "You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage. This is the spirit that White captured so effortlessly. My five stars are primarily there because of his ability to capture the essence of the franchise, to make this book feel like it belonged between ALIEN and ALIENS, like it's been there all along and I just missed this movie because I was sick with the flu when it was in theaters.

I also give it five stars for the science. As an author, I can tell you this was no small feat. Anyone can write a "Book One," but it takes a particular mind-set to write a "Book Five" and make it fit with all the books in the series, especially when Books I-IV were all written by different people who had zero obligation to stick to a single canon. When you see, say, Season Eight of a particular TV show go completely off the rails because the writers don't bother to watch Seasons I-VII, or, say, a Season Five of a show that is a train wreck because the writers were just making crap up as they went along, you have a better understanding of how difficult White's job was in incorporating several elements of the ALIENS franchise together under one well-built roof.

The last thing I'll say is that the "bad guy" is quite fun. There were a few small plot issues that took me out of the story for a bit. Usually, that takes the shine off a book for me, but in this case the rest of the work was so strong I was able to roll through it.

View all 3 comments. While I've enjoyed my share of Alien tie-in works across comics and prose novels, The Cold Forge by Alex White might be the first to truly impress me beyond being a few days worth of solid entertainment. Most Alien stories seem to involve beleaguered colonists or Colonial Space Marines getting more than they bargained for, with the authors content for their stories to exist as little more than a redux of one of the first two films.

While this approach has certainly worked well and given this fra While I've enjoyed my share of Alien tie-in works across comics and prose novels, The Cold Forge by Alex White might be the first to truly impress me beyond being a few days worth of solid entertainment. While this approach has certainly worked well and given this franchise's reading audience exactly what it expects, Alex White's approach is to raise the bar, and for that I'm grateful.

There are no colonists in un surprising peril, no marines battling for their lives. There are in fact no good guys or good gals at all. The Cold Forge is a secret research base for Weyland-Yutani, the megalithic corporation seeking to exploit and weaponize the infamous alien Xenomorphs. While there are various other research projects in progress aboard the space station, the aliens are the big money maker and the reason Cold Forge exists at all.

Unfortunately, the researchers aren't delivering on their contracts and auditor Dorian Sudler is tasked with cutting the fat. He pinpoints as the primary loss leader Dr. Blue Marsalis, a bed-ridden geneticists cursed with a rare, incurable disease. Blue's mind is cutting-edge, but her frail body means she has to operate via a cybernetic interface with the station's android, Marcus. How these three personalities interact and cope, particularly once the inevitable excrement hits the proverbial fans, is the crux of Alien: The Cold Forge.

Although White delivers a bevy of Xenomorphic action, it's the human characters that really sold me on this particular novel. There's not a single likable individual in this whole book's cast, and I good and truly dug that. Dorian Sudler is a freaking psychopath, and I was absolutely delighted by the depths of his at-times shocking depravity. Once he learns about Blue's research into the alien lifeforms, his fetishization of the creatures is marvelous to behold. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Blue, whose discovery of a protein injected into victims during the face-hugger stage of impregnation leads her to exploit the Xenomorphs for medical advancement - primarily her own.

Ostensibly, Blue is the closest character we have to a heroine in The Cold Forge , and it's mostly by default simply because of how evil and manipulative Sudler is. While she is certainly one tough cookie when push comes to shove, her utter lack of altruism makes her a pretty far cry from Ellen Ripley.

If you're looking brave souls doing heroic and adventurous derring-do in the name of all that's good and holy, you might want to look elsewhere. For me, it's flat-out intriguing to see two monstrous humans stuck in the middle of an alien outbreak and fighting for survival, working to one-up the other in their cat-and-mouse games to not only escape the doomed station but to seek out and destroy one another.

Sudler and Blue are both Alphas in their respective fields, and putting them together is like throwing water on super hot oil. Their instant dislike of one another is palpable, and White does a great job keeping us on our toes as to who will eventually make it out on top, and how, given that Blue is so heavily dependent on cybernetic aid.

While the Alien property has never been high in humor and upbeat chipperness, there's moments to The Cold Forge that are wonderfully nihilistic, carving out a new level of darkness for such a long-lived property. In The Cold Forge , Alex White embraces the crossroads of sci-fi horror genres that the Alien property has lived in for so long. There's plenty of medical science, some of which even ties into how the Xenomorphs take on characteristics of the face-hugged hosts they're birthed from in this case, chimps are the victim du jour , some sci-fi wizardry between Blue and Marcus as well as a past romances between Blue and Anne, a security officer, whose dalliances with each other were furthered through the use of Marcus's android body, which raises all kinds of other intriguing questions , and a whole lot of horror and gore once things click into high gear.

White gives this particular Alien story a score of various and compelling layers that help set it apart from the more traditional franchise fare, and it's all the stronger because of it. He stays true to the spirit of the franchise, but isn't afraid to cut loose and get daring where it truly counts, giving us characters defined by their determination at the expense of everyone else. Bravo, sir! View all 8 comments.

The ship is called the Cold Forge but it has a small crew, mostly for the lab. The main lab doc is working with chimps, aliens, and alien eggs. But the crew gets a visit by the big brass to see results. But you know that all alien movies, nothing stays calm long!

Great narration! Pretty soon all hell will break loose. And, of course, it does. We win wars. Yes, the build-up to the apocalypse-style ending is admittedly a slow burn, but this makes the journey all the more worthwhile. What makes this such a great Alien novel is the characterisation.

Also, it would not be a halfway decent Alien novel without some level of kinkiness to it. Instead of conducting research like a good Weyland-Yutani drone into weaponising the snatchers, Blue instead has a pet project on the side to seek a cure for her own disease, which will ultimately be the key to unlock a host of other genetic disorders.

Here her efforts are focused on the face hugger, and how the parasite enters its victim: Plagiarus praepotens is the ultimate builder, able to rewrite and reconstruct organic matter in seconds.

Blue is interested fascinated by what happens to the host at a molecular level: It first became apparent at the moment of impregnation. The fleeting heat of a molecular change within the oesophagus of the chimpanzee, not a larva or worm placed into the subject, but a set of complex chemical instructions that went beyond the intricacy of anything humanity had ever seen.

It is also an uncomfortable, but obviously completely unintentional, reference to the current Coronavirus pandemic sweeping the world. And the reader quickly gets the feeling that Blue is obsessed to the point of losing all ability to see the bigger picture. Especially when another type of virus altogether comes into play. However, Weyland-Yutani quickly notices that the Cold Forge is bleeding money and not producing results as per its ongoing investment.

If that sounds extreme, the key to a good Alien book is that you have to paint in broad strokes. Dorian is a thoroughly detestable character, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Indeed, his Damascus Road moment at the end has nothing to do with personal redemption, and everything with self-immolation. Actually, none of the characters are that likeable, human or alien.

That White is able to inject some frisson of energy and excitement into his descriptions of the creatures is testament to his writing chops. This is an extremely well-written and thought-out book, and just goes to show what happens when you let somebody loose on the IP who understands what makes Alien, well, alien.

Sep 04, Ethan rated it really liked it. Among their projects is one to weaponize the Xenomorphs, of which the station has many in an ultra-secure system of kennels. The kennels, unlike most of the ship's systems, can only be opened manually by a human, and there are automated gun emplacements trained on the exit doors at all time In Alex White's Alien: The Cold Forge , a group of technicians, programmers, and scientists develop weapons for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation in deep space on a station called RB, a.

The kennels, unlike most of the ship's systems, can only be opened manually by a human, and there are automated gun emplacements trained on the exit doors at all times. The Xenomorph project, codenamed "Glitter Edifice", is headed by Doctor Blue Marsalis, who has run into a stumbling block in her research. As the station's projects have failed to be profitable or produce tangible results, Weyland-Yutani dispatches an auditor to the station to analyze its operations and either find a way to make it profitable or shut it down.

But things are not what they seem. One or more of the crew have their own motives in mind. A containment failure occurs, and Xenomorphs are soon loose on the ship. But who freed them, and why? Can the crew survive the Xenomorphs and come up with a plan? And more importantly, can they survive an even greater threat that could destroy them all?

The first pages of the book were unbelievably boring. The book actually started to get interesting pretty much exactly pages in. This means that over one-third of this entire book is boring, as it's only pages long or at least the Kindle version is. I really disliked some of the characters, for different reasons mainly Lucy and Blue Lucy just cries all the time, swears angrily at people she needs anger management training , and generally has a permanent deer-in-the-headlights look on her face.

Blue on the other hand becomes an OK character over time, but she suffers from a million and a half health problems and is portrayed as a bit of a victim. These health problems also make her a very depressing character to read, as the reader is constantly told about new problems she has, and about how she is incredibly frail and basically has one foot in the grave.

Why you would throw a character like that into an Alien novel, where you have to be tough and ruthless to survive, is beyond me.

That being said, there's a lot to love in this book. One of the characters starts out as a sociopath and becomes a psychopath over the course of the book, and this was portrayed brilliantly, and to bone-chilling effect. The author must have done a lot of research into these personality types. White's greatest achievement with this book, in my opinion, is that in a book where Xenomorphs are loose on a spaceship, killing off a crew who are helpless to escape and ill-equipped to fight them, the deadliest threat on board isn't even the Xenomorphs.

White manages to create a threat far more terrifying and far more potent than the Xenomorphs, and this, in my view, is very impressive.

If you're a fan of the Aliens franchise, this is a must-read. The story can be a bit repetitive at times, with crew members being sent out amongst the Xenos time and again to fix this or that system and to get this or that back online, but the writing is sharp and the story original, and besides a sleep-inducing first hundred pages, it's a captivating and terrifying thriller the rest of the way.

Nov 03, Bradley rated it really liked it Shelves: horror , sci-fi , shelf. Let's put this book into context, shall we? I didn't expect too much because it is, after all, a horror in an SF setting just like the movies.

We have a cross between Alien 3 and Alien 4 without so much of the goofy, with Weyland corp still being the bad guy, and very few actually likable characters. Stir, mix, let steep in some xenomorph stew, wait for the stupid humans to do something nasty, perverse, and generally unlikable.

Honesty here: I was pretty bored by the formula leading up to the alien breakouts, with a slight exception to Blue, who suffers from a massive degenerative disease and who also uses or abuses a synth. Maybe I wanted something rather more One thing I can say about the newer canonical movies is that they broke new ground even if they kinda broke the cannon and some credulity. But, in the end, I did end up enjoying the human monster twists, the glorified horror, and the bloodshed.

Should anyone expect anything more from movie-universe tie-ins? Maybe not. Jun 03, kartik narayanan rated it it was amazing. Game Over, man, Game Over! Welp, that sentence doesn't come in the book but Alien: The Cold Forge manages to hit all the other beats from the Alien movies, especially Aliens. A:TCF is a sleeper hit. I picked it up with low expectations since there have been so many hit or miss productions with this property.

But, I ended up putting a night out just to finish it. This shows just how awesome it is. It takes all the elements that work, from Aliens, and manages to put a unique twist on everything. Yo Game Over, man, Game Over! You will be able to recognize the inspirations but you will also be able to appreciate the uniqueness of the presentation in the book.

And this book has a further surprise. It has one of the most reprehensible villains ever written. But, secretly, I started rooting for this person. And I feel, this is how the character should have been played in the movie too. In addition, heroes becomes villains and vice versa. Overall, if you are an Alien fan, this book is a must read. Go for it. Oct 28, Holly The GrimDragon rated it it was amazing Shelves: the-infinite-library , fantasy-sci-fi.

She washes him in her fantasies, wringing every last drop of ecstasy from his bones, and showing him that he's been missing from her station life for far too long. He is startled. He is aroused. He is accepted.

I haven't read the newer canonical Alien trilogy, but I dig all of the novelizations, for the most part. In fa "She shoves him down and shows him all the wonderful things her body can do, devouring every inch of his flesh. In fact, the first Alien is in my top movie novelizations of all-time! For me, Alex White produced something that both pays homage to the spirit of the franchise, yet their style also results in something wholly original.

Two of them have fallen behind and the third is running out of funding. We soon find out that RB is shrouded in secrets. I'm sure you can figure out what the mystery may revolve around if you know the formula for Alien! HINT: Xenomorphs! The thing with Alien is that it has proven time and time again that mankind itself is the real horror.

As Lovecraft once said, the oldest and strongest emotion is fear. Because of that, people behave fucking terribly, whether from some form of fear or misanthropy or because they are just shitty humans. Truly, people are the scariest monsters and always will be! White writes utterly vile yet diverse characters within this book. I struggle to think of a single likable person. The closest to a protagonist that we are given is Blue, a doctor that is suffering from a degenerative disease that leaves her bedridden.

She uses a special interface that allows her to control an android body to move around in, which gives her such a unique story. However, it's hard to sympathize with her because she's.. She is driven by desperation to save herself. Ripley, she is not! Between her and the wank stain that is Dorian, there isn't a lot of altruism going on.

But that works for this story. For this hostile setting. I loved that so goddamn much, which is rare for me. I tend to find a character or two that I gravitate towards and want to cocoon them in my skin forever, but I loathed these assholes! Seriously, some of the most downright despicable characters that I've ever read. And I read a lot of fucked up shit! That's not to say that the Xenomorphs don't play into the horror. Because they do. There are some gritty, brutal, squishy scenes in this that are fucking gnarly.

It's glorious!! The Cold Forge was fucking grimy and chaotic and violent and compulsively delightful! Alex White has blown me away again with such brilliant writing in these two distinctly different books that I've read.

View 2 comments. It is a symphony of death, a masterpiece of hellish design - raw will. All the shades of human monsters slamming up against the true black of something without even the concept of morals. Unique among the alien stories is that our badass MC woman is severely disable. But the fight on her! May 29, Quiet rated it it was ok. An appreciated albeit underwhelming addition to the Alien series. The Cold Forge follows the formula established by the original Alien , and which has been wonderfully recaptured in the prior novels Out of the Shadows , Sea of Sorrow , and River of Pain , and offers a fresh new story that can be read on its own without any prior knowledge of the series to enjoy.

That plural means a lot; if you want "Hoo-huh! Again, this story maintains the formula of the original Alien. You have a space-station laboratory owned and maintained by the nefarious Weyland-Yutani corporation, and on-board are a bunch of relatively decent people who are increasing levels of shady working on generally evil stuff like killer computer viruses and commiting experiments on monstrous alien creatures which are always, time after time, too dangerous to contain, and who eventually become murdered by same experiments an creatures.

It's a series, so I mean, if you don't like predictability at all, ever, then this series probably isn't for you. If you're a fan of cheap sci-fi and like a reliable, swift horror book for bedtime, then this is a great series of comfortable books to get involved with. The lead character of this story is the ultimate in Minority points, a black lesbian cripple with gender dysphoria whose main enemy is a straight white man Oh noes! Or, more likely, we're supposed to sympathize because she's a black lesbian cripple with gender dysphoria whose main enemy is a straight white man, and ignore that she's a thief, endangers others, morally inconsistent, grossly self-centered, and is generally unlikable.

But that isn't the case here, and while it's easy to go "Yeah wow! Breaking up the formula! What sucks here is the main character, who is utterly lousy and thoroughly unlikable, and there's no real justification for this other than the fact that the author believed too much that Victim-politics would make up for her weak characterization, which it does not at all.

Call me obnoxious, but the big draw of what made the Alien series so damn cool and what continues to make it refreshing in its formula was that the original protagonist was a woman who not only overcame her own short-comings but was also an immaculately constructed figure of sympathy for her earnest morality and the depths she will explore to maintain her vision of right and wrong.

She could be black, asian, whatever; what's important is what she did. And that isn't the case here with this book, and so having a majorly fractured component in the formula, the Heroine herself, is a big problem.

So although it's an enjoyable book that largely sticks to formula, it deviates where it should not have. If you're going to take on writing for a series whose audience depend on consistency, then you need to write to that audience, and not to some Gender-Studies barista who filled you up with hocus pablum one time.

View 1 comment. Boy, was I in for a disappointment. I told you the book was unique in its details. In fairness, not every story NEEDS to have likable characters - plenty of movies have been made and novels written about protagonists that were deeply flawed and hard to relate to.

At first, that doesn't seem like it will prove to be that big of a problem - as mentioned, White has quite a few unique story quirks up his sleeve, and he deploys them often enough in the early going that it's easy to buy into the illusion that they alone will be enough to maintain one's investment.

However, at least for this reader, it didn't take long - I'd say till about page 51 or so - before the experience of reading the book slowly became unenjoyable. By page , that same experience had become outright exhausting, and even a little dispiriting. This made for a remaining pages that were Unfortunately, it's also a book that is almost entirely lacking in compelling or attractive characters. And at least for me, that alone was enough to sink pretty much the entire experience.

Oct 27, Mili rated it liked it Shelves: own-the-book. I flew through this book at times cause I love the Alien franchise and Alex writes amazing dark scenes and the action is thrilling! The first or so pages weren't entirely my thing but the rest was so much fun.

The Xenomorphs are described in a way that made my mind create the most amazing 4k movie scenes haha. The survival was tense, the gore where limbs are torn off and flesh was being devoured were fking awesome I had to slow down to cherish them some more.

Blue is one of the MC's and I li I flew through this book at times cause I love the Alien franchise and Alex writes amazing dark scenes and the action is thrilling! Blue is one of the MC's and I like her addition to this plot.

She has a disease that deteriorates her well being, she is practically bedridden and doesn't bother moving much cause she has an AI she can connect with mentally and uses as her own body. She runs a project on a station experimenting with Xenomorphs.

Blue is smart and has a strong and determined mindset. Then the other MC Dorian comes in the picture he is very prominent in the story and you kinda start with him in this book So much so that it literally made me like the book less. He kinda ruined it for me. He does NOT like weakness, it disgusts him. I honestly did not like how much he was part of this story, at points I got so annoyed that I wanted to skip his parts.

He was one of those characters where his arrogance should've killed him off somewhere at the start. I wish this was more balanced out, sure it is a personal preference but it really bugged me cause it broke the book in two for me. Purely on that character. Oct 28, Alan rated it did not like it. I didn't hate this book, and I wouldn't call it terrible. But it wholly unlikable from the lazy writing style to a cast of utterly reprehensible, unlikable characters.

Even the "protagonists" you were supposed to root for were terrible beyond redemption. It's like the author took the couple of adversaries from the Alien movies and stuffed them all in one book, but not before making them thorougly despicable. Mar 15, Nicholas rated it did not like it. There is nothing original in this book. Just as Amanda appears to hit rock bottom To follow it, she must travel to the remote Sevastopol Station.

There she hopes to find the answers she seeks. But the station is in ruins, and death stalks the corridors in the form of a deadly alien the likes of which she never could have imagined. When an industrial spy steals a Xenomorph egg, former Colonial Marine Zula Hendricks must prevent an alien from killing everyone on an isolated colony planet. Venture, a direct rival to the Weyland-Yutani corporation, will accept any risk to crush the competition.

Thus, when a corporate spy "acquires" a bizarre, leathery egg from a hijacked vessel, she takes it directly to the Venture testing facility on Jericho 3. Early tests reveal little, however, and they come to an inevitable conclusion.

They need a human test subject Yet nothing can prepare them for the horror that appears—a creature more hideous than any Zula has encountered before. Unless stopped, it will kill every human being on the planet. When the Colonial Marines vessel Sulaco docks with space station and military installation Anchorpoint, a new form of Xenomorph appears. The Sulaco-on its return journey from LVenters a sector controlled by the "Union of Progressive Peoples," a nation-state engaged in an ongoing cold war and arms race.

A Facehugger attacks the lead commando, and the others narrowly escape, taking what remains of Bishop with them. The Sulaco continues to Anchorpoint, a space station and military installation the size of a small moon, where it falls under control of the military's Weapons Division.

Boarding the Sulaco, a team of Colonial Marines and scientists is assaulted by a pair of Xenomorph drones. In the fight Ripley's cryotube is badly damaged. It's taken aboard Anchorpoint, where Ripley is kept comatose. The U. The kind of experimentation that could yield a monstrous hybrid, and perhaps even a Queen.

A Weyland-Yutani scientist arrives at Pala Station and finds the researchers there courting disaster The official prequel to the new Alien video game from Cold Iron Studios. Lured there by the promise of alien artifacts, instead, he finds a warped bureaucracy and staff of misfits testing the effects of Xenomorph bio-materials on living creatures. Unbeknownst to the personnel, however, there is an infiltrator among them whose actions could spell disaster.

Also on staff is Victor Rawlings, a former marine who gathers together other veterans to prepare for the worst. As Pala Station receives a delivery of alien eggs, the experiments spin out of control, and only the former Colonial Marines stand between the humans and certain death.

In Cauldron, on the spaceship Umiak, an elite troupe of cadets is forced into servitude by an unscrupulous captain taking the ship to a smuggler's rendezvous. During the transaction aboard the eerily silent Virginia, the cadets unwittingly transport an unexpected cargo: a hive of hibernating aliens. As the aliens begin to awake, a terrifying battle erupts between the cadets, the smugglers, the captain, and the emergent monsters. The cadets soon realize that in space, no one can hear them scream.

Steel Egg tells the story of the first encounter - someone battled them, and survived. Aliens and humans have fought before! When a human spaceship discovers a vast egg-shaped vessel in Saturn's orbit, the crew powers in to investigate. Thinking the ship might contain usable metal for Earth, they force their way aboard. Three teams split up to explore the ship. Already the aliens have awoken. The first of all the battles unfolds.

In Criminal Enterprise, Thomas Chase wakes up from cryosleep to his first day at a new job - as a pilot for a contraband drug company dropping a shipment on Fantasia, a rock-planet terraformed to hide an elaborate drug manufacturing operation. Everything from synthetic heroin to MX7 is cooked here, in protected caves guard-dogged by the savage Aliens.

When Chase's craft touches down on Fantasia, a chain of events begins that cannot be stopped. As criminals and competitors try to take over the drug-empire from the dangerous kingpin, Chase and his brother Pete are caught in the crossfire No Exit tells the story of Detective Anders Kramm, awakening to a changed world after thirty years of cryogenic sleep.

The alien threat has been subdued. Company interests dominate universal trade. Terraforming is big money now, with powerful men willing to do anything to assure dominance over other worlds.

But Kramm has a secret. He knows why The Company killed twelve of its top scientists. He knows why the aliens have been let loose on the surface of a contested planet. He knows that the information he has is valuable, and that The Company will do everything it can to stop him from telling his secret to the world. Haunted by memories of the brutal murder of his family, Kramm is set adrift amid billion dollar stakes. Spotlight on science fiction by trans, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming writers Guest Editor Eris Young New stories from B.

Her tavern is packed every night, her staff is amazing, and her nosy mother is busy hauling cargo on the far side of the galaxy. The last thing she needs is a romance to mess up her plans. Here everyone is free to be themselves. Haven might be different.