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A review by almassia
Alien: The Cold Forge by Alex White
5.0
Describing this book in too much detail can really ruin one of its best qualities: an almost limitless capacity to surprise, thrill, and make you go "HOLY SHIT!" loud enough to wake up your dog in the other room. If you like Alien--hell, if you just like good sci-fi or good horror or good space thrillers or you just want to have a really fucking good time--this book is for you. Close this review and go read it. Go in cold. You deserve to have a good time.
But if that's not enough, here's some other thoughts:
I want to be absolutely clear: this is monumentally impressive writing. The saying "easy reading is the product of hard writing" is absolutely true--like Lady Gaga saying that it's incredibly hard to write a song that's both technically and aesthetically impressive while still being a bop you want to dance to. This book has obviously gone through an incredible gauntlet of refinement, and it shows in the mirror-shine polish of its sentence structure and word choice, its scene pacing, its character beats, and the timing of its tension, shocks, and reversals. There's a reason literary fiction writers fail when they try to attempt more kinetic, narrative-driven genres: it's really really really really really fucking hard.
But White guides their readers expertly, never letting the shocks spill over into Grand Guignol (or worse, self-indulgence), knowing when to twist the situation to make it just that extra bit more intense without burning their readers out, making their antagonists monstrously cunning but their heroes just that slightest extra tiniest bit more, balancing the perspective of an absolute abomination of a human being so finely on the edge of horrifying and entrancing but never allowing it to fall into voyeurism, and--most impressive of all--making the creatures as inscrutable and terrifying as they are in the first two movies after almost fifty years of constant pop culture saturation. This is so incredibly goddamn hard to do, and White absolutely nails it.
The only thing that ever kind of broke the near-constant spell of narrative hypnosis this book had over me for three days is some weird character blocking in like two chapters in the middle of the book. It's absolutely inconsequential--just a character going back and forth to one part of the room and then another, but it's sort of confusing where she is in space because it's sort of contradictory with an earlier action she takes in the previous chapter--and it has zero effect on the actual motivations or actions of the characters and doesn't break any part of the story, so if I'm mentioning something this insubstantial as my only criticism you better believe this book is a finely-tuned story machine.
I mainlined this book in three days in the way I used to mainline books when I was a teenager. That inimitable, unique joy of a narrative vice-grip is something I find in fewer and fewer books as I get older, and I can't describe how much I miss it. When I find a book like this, written with such obvious care and attention to the reader's experience, that has clearly gone through so much painstaking work to make it read this smoothly, it's a special thing. I'm so grateful to this book for giving me that feeling I love so much.
And in what can only be interpreted as a Jovian-sized "fuck you" to far-right reactionaries on YouTube, the main character is a black, gay, disabled woman who performs transness in multiple dimensions. She's the literal bogeyman of every fascist fuckwit's fever dreams--and she is absolutely thrilling. Blue's multiple intersectionalities come together in unique and awesome ways that only make her even more exciting to follow through the story. I'm obviously not operating under the illusion that those idiots actually spew their hate speech in good faith, but if someone you know doesn't think a black gay disabled genderqueer woman can be an extraordinary protagonist, give them this book and then watch as their weekend melts away into a blur of monsters and aliens and corporate intrigue and a struggle for survival.
And pick up a copy for yourself, too. As a treat.
But if that's not enough, here's some other thoughts:
I want to be absolutely clear: this is monumentally impressive writing. The saying "easy reading is the product of hard writing" is absolutely true--like Lady Gaga saying that it's incredibly hard to write a song that's both technically and aesthetically impressive while still being a bop you want to dance to. This book has obviously gone through an incredible gauntlet of refinement, and it shows in the mirror-shine polish of its sentence structure and word choice, its scene pacing, its character beats, and the timing of its tension, shocks, and reversals. There's a reason literary fiction writers fail when they try to attempt more kinetic, narrative-driven genres: it's really really really really really fucking hard.
But White guides their readers expertly, never letting the shocks spill over into Grand Guignol (or worse, self-indulgence), knowing when to twist the situation to make it just that extra bit more intense without burning their readers out, making their antagonists monstrously cunning but their heroes just that slightest extra tiniest bit more, balancing the perspective of an absolute abomination of a human being so finely on the edge of horrifying and entrancing but never allowing it to fall into voyeurism, and--most impressive of all--making the creatures as inscrutable and terrifying as they are in the first two movies after almost fifty years of constant pop culture saturation. This is so incredibly goddamn hard to do, and White absolutely nails it.
The only thing that ever kind of broke the near-constant spell of narrative hypnosis this book had over me for three days is some weird character blocking in like two chapters in the middle of the book. It's absolutely inconsequential--just a character going back and forth to one part of the room and then another, but it's sort of confusing where she is in space because it's sort of contradictory with an earlier action she takes in the previous chapter--and it has zero effect on the actual motivations or actions of the characters and doesn't break any part of the story, so if I'm mentioning something this insubstantial as my only criticism you better believe this book is a finely-tuned story machine.
I mainlined this book in three days in the way I used to mainline books when I was a teenager. That inimitable, unique joy of a narrative vice-grip is something I find in fewer and fewer books as I get older, and I can't describe how much I miss it. When I find a book like this, written with such obvious care and attention to the reader's experience, that has clearly gone through so much painstaking work to make it read this smoothly, it's a special thing. I'm so grateful to this book for giving me that feeling I love so much.
And in what can only be interpreted as a Jovian-sized "fuck you" to far-right reactionaries on YouTube, the main character is a black, gay, disabled woman who performs transness in multiple dimensions. She's the literal bogeyman of every fascist fuckwit's fever dreams--and she is absolutely thrilling. Blue's multiple intersectionalities come together in unique and awesome ways that only make her even more exciting to follow through the story. I'm obviously not operating under the illusion that those idiots actually spew their hate speech in good faith, but if someone you know doesn't think a black gay disabled genderqueer woman can be an extraordinary protagonist, give them this book and then watch as their weekend melts away into a blur of monsters and aliens and corporate intrigue and a struggle for survival.
And pick up a copy for yourself, too. As a treat.