By Alan Dean Foster

Titan Books, out now

The log of the Covenant as it arrives at Extinction…

For the first time in 25 years, Alan Dean Foster has returned to the Alien universe that he helped to flesh out with his novelisations of the first three, very different, stories. (Ann Crispin wrote up Alien: Resurrection; Marc Cerasini adapted the first Alien vs Predator, adding quite a bit to it; the second film didn’t get a novel; and the Prometheus novel credited to Joe Spies & Damon Lindelof only appeared in Japan.) Foster has always added considerably to the characterisation as it’s appeared in the films, trying to make sense of elements that might pass muster in a movie theatre, but which don’t necessarily hold up to the more intensive reading process.

The biggest expansion that he includes here is making the various couples and the relationships between them clearer than we see on screen; particularly prior to the arrival at the mysterious planet, there are plenty of scenes from different points of view that emphasize the solid grounding of each pair. There are subtle differences from what we see on screen – reluctant Captain Oram possibly the one you’ll notice most – and there are various extensions to scenes, which of course we may see in the deleted scenes on the Blu-ray eventually.

There’s one very noticeable alteration from the final film – and if you’ve not seen the movie, then stop reading now as it’s quite a spoiler. On screen, Daniels makes reference to a shared conversation she had with Walter, which, for obvious reasons, David is unaware of – and thus desperately fights against being put into hypersleep. In the novel, David is much more subtle, deliberately planting a seed in Daniels’ mind so that she will realise who he really is. It’d be interesting to know if the latter was the original intent of the scene, but it does rely on the audience remembering a line of dialogue from a portion of the film when all hell was letting loose…

Foster’s gift for rendering the horror of the franchise remains intact, and the various deaths and attacks are vividly brought to life. There’s also what feels like more explanation of what David was up to in his ten year post-crash life, going into detail about what the Engineers’ virus was. The publicity for this notes that the book is tied into the Covenant prequel coming from Foster in September, and this really makes me hope that that book will deal with the many questions that Prometheus left hanging!

Verdict: The novelisation can’t deal with some of the fundamental flaws of the storyline, in particular its amalgamation of many tropes from the franchise’s past, but Foster has created a novel that brings the crew of the Covenant into sharper relief.  7/10

Paul Simpson