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mountford14's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
verkisto's review
1.0
With the last book, Rogue, I started making a list of elements that (apparently) have to be included in every Aliens books. With Labyrinth, I remembered one more:
4. Dream sequence and/or flashback involving previous encounters.
Here, Perry includes a chapter-long flashback early in the book without making it clear we're about to jump back to some years before. No, we just get an introduction to a few characters, and then a sudden leap back to earlier in one of their lives. It was pretty abrupt, enough so that I thought it must have been a dream sequence (see rule #4), but it went on for so long that I started to doubt myself.
There's nothing new to this story. We get more military, more cold sleep, and more of the incessant military banter that's steeped so much in testosterone and masculinity. We get a token female character, but by the end of the book, she's less a military character and more a damsel in distress, who cries and breaks down far more than one would expect for someone who's career military and should be a bit more accustomed to death.
Speaking of military, Perry uses a handful of acronyms in the book, but doesn't explain what they mean. It's fairly easy to understand them by way of context -- TS is a standard Earth year, and NI is some sort of intelligence group -- but the never defines them, and I can't come up with what they're supposed to stand for. Is TS Terran Standard? If so, then standard what? Why isn't it TSY if that's what it means?
Also of note is the use of a can of hairspray and a lighter to kill one of the aliens. Aside from the fact that I'm not convinced that setup would create enough fire to kill one of them, what is a can of hairspray doing in a science lab on a military base?
Labyrinth isn't as stupid as some of the books that preceded it, but it's not a smart story, either. I'm having regrets at starting this series of books, because the best I've been able to give any of them so far is two stars.
4. Dream sequence and/or flashback involving previous encounters.
Here, Perry includes a chapter-long flashback early in the book without making it clear we're about to jump back to some years before. No, we just get an introduction to a few characters, and then a sudden leap back to earlier in one of their lives. It was pretty abrupt, enough so that I thought it must have been a dream sequence (see rule #4), but it went on for so long that I started to doubt myself.
There's nothing new to this story. We get more military, more cold sleep, and more of the incessant military banter that's steeped so much in testosterone and masculinity. We get a token female character, but by the end of the book, she's less a military character and more a damsel in distress, who cries and breaks down far more than one would expect for someone who's career military and should be a bit more accustomed to death.
Speaking of military, Perry uses a handful of acronyms in the book, but doesn't explain what they mean. It's fairly easy to understand them by way of context -- TS is a standard Earth year, and NI is some sort of intelligence group -- but the never defines them, and I can't come up with what they're supposed to stand for. Is TS Terran Standard? If so, then standard what? Why isn't it TSY if that's what it means?
Also of note is the use of a can of hairspray and a lighter to kill one of the aliens. Aside from the fact that I'm not convinced that setup would create enough fire to kill one of them, what is a can of hairspray doing in a science lab on a military base?
Labyrinth isn't as stupid as some of the books that preceded it, but it's not a smart story, either. I'm having regrets at starting this series of books, because the best I've been able to give any of them so far is two stars.
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