rage-war-3By Tim Lebbon

Titan, out now

The Rage are heading for Earth – can humanity and their new allies save civilisation?

Tim Lebbon doesn’t stop throwing out surprises in this conclusion to the Rage War trilogy, setting up some interesting possibilities for a further set of stories featuring some of the same characters (it’s hardly a spoiler to say that not everyone makes it out of this one alive!). More than once the tagline for the original Alien vs. Predator movie came to mind while I was reading this (“Whoever Wins, We Lose”) but Lebbon subverts expectations regularly and some characters who you’d firmly bet would not come out of this well do so.

It’s a hard book to review without spoiling the twists, but suffice it to say that anyone who complained that the earlier novels didn’t have sufficient action between the Aliens and humanity and/or the Predators will enjoy this. Lebbon provides plenty of moments of gore, but sets up the situations with deft descriptions and point of view moments so that the characters don’t just feel like cannon fodder. In keeping with the best of the films on which this is based, there are moments of heroism and self-sacrifice as well as sudden and horrific death and an acceleration of tension towards the final confrontation.

Verdict: An epic conclusion. 9/10

Paul Simpson

Click here to order from Amazon.co.uk