Bishop, who had meet his electronic demise on Fiorina 161 during the events depicted in the movie Alien 3, is brought back to life by Michael Bishop who seeks to unlock the Xenomorph knowledge his creation holds in his memory banks. While Bishop, everyone’s favourite artificial person, is happy to be back Michael may have altered motives. On the bright side the duo are happily on board the Chinese flagship Xinjianq, Bishop is probably going to be less happy when he discovers the Chinese are doing their own Xenomorph research looking for the ever popular bio weapon of the future. Unfortunately, the Chinese Xeno research costs the lives of a Vietnamese smuggling crew, who are capture, impregnated, and left to birth aliens. Of course not everything goes to the Chinese plan with a Vietnamese crew member escaping, which is sort of eclipsed by a Xenomorph also making a break for freedom. Hey reflections of Alien, but at least the Chinese are heavily armed, as if that’s going to stop an eager beaver Xeno from going on a rampage. Worse for the Chinese the Colonial marines are closing in, with the attention of rescuing Bishop, who the view as a marine. An explosive climax is going to happen, hold onto you seat space cadets.

I was completely unaware that T. R. Napper was an Aussie writer, which came as a pleasant surprise, not enough Downunder in the franchise folks, and which also explains the character of Kari, more on her later. Napper generally deals in Sci-Fi and Cyberpunk, so interest for me was how the Author would handle the inherent horror elements an Alien novel must include. Not entirely sure we’ll cover any more of Napper’s bibliography, hey horror site I’m sure some of the SciFi places are all over his work, but fingers crossed the dude decides to side track into the dark genre at some stage, if only for a few books, we’re not greedy over here.

There’s multiple ideas bubbling away in this novel which raises the overall narrative above what we have come to expect from an Alien novel. Napper is doing his bit to explore A.I, the really thing not the clever programming marketers are referring to as A.I, and especially emerging self-aware Artificial Intelligence. Bishop is becoming more human as the novel progresses, he has post traumatic issues after his encounter with the Alien queen, is questioning his place in the universe, and is coming to terms with his commitment to the colonial marines. He is initially uncomfortable with sharing his knowledge with Michael, having developed a sense that weaponizing the Xenos is not a good idea, and has to come to terms with what that decision might involve. Great characterisation by Napper, the reader can readily identify with Bishop’s trials and tribulations. 

And the humans aren’t getting left in artificial shade. Kari, a new recruit, is trying to impress her marine colleagues in the hopes of achieving recognition within the corps which will help her family leave the camps and find a better life for themselves as refugees to the Americas. Her personality is all about fitting in, achieving at least parity with her comrades, and finding some friendship. Unfortunately, author Napper has fallen into the trap of writing for a “modern audience”, which naturally sees Kari as a lesbian for no good plot reason. While I normally don’t have any issue over the sexual orientation of a character, hell bring on the trans person for all I care, but seriously if that isn’t going to help your plot or enhance a character in a meaningful way then leave it the flock out. Otherwise Kari is written as a sympathetic character finding it hard to achieve in the tough world of the colonial marine.

The other character I wanted to make mention of before moving on was marine leader Marcel Apone, the younger brother of Bishop’s former boss and a direct connection to events in Aliens. I kind of dug this character, he’s as tough as the former sergeant and is going to get to Bishop come hell or high water regardless of cost.

Besides some navel gazing over the Bishop and Michael relationship, parent to creation sort of thing, and ruminations by the android over intelligence and what it means to be human, the pacing is brisk and gets where it’s going in quick order. We initially have three story lines, Bishop and Michael, the Colonial Marine outfit, and the ill-fated Vietnamese smugglers, but they bend into each other by the final part of the book when battle is joined between humans, and between humans and Xenomorphs. The pacing picks up during the final confrontation, and I was pretty happy with this aspect of the novel. Who doesn’t want Xenomorphs spoiling everyone’s party in some tense and torrid scenes.

Before anyone starts to think the Chinese are the villains of the piece, hey makes a change from Weyland-Yutani right, Napper writes at least one pretty sympathetic Chinese character who is forced to fulfil the wishes of her overlords. Sure feeding people to face huggers is pretty low down on the moral scale, but the treatment of minority groups within present day China would pretty much give us an insight into that nation. Napper is pretty accurate in his depiction in this novel, but isn’t simply putting all the Chinese under a black hat and getting on with the slaughter, oops spoiler. Multi-faceted characters come to mind, learn to live with it Bro. 

Well I had a heck of a time with Aliens: Bishop, we’re talking a well written novel that adds to the expanded Alien universe. There’s great characters, exciting action scenes, and pacing that is simply superb. I’m going out on a limb here and saying this novel is definitely in the top ten of novels set in the Alien universe. So yeah full recommendation, whatever you do get a copy of the book and set aside a weekend to get your read on. I’ve got my fingers crossed Napper writes further alien novels, as this excellent novel should have franchise fans high fiving each other and demanding more.