| You're currently viewing the Jolene Blalock - We Want Brunette Jolene SciFi Fan Forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. We do not release ANY email information at the Brunette Jolene Board!! As a new memeber your access will be limited until you have 10 posts. Once you reach that level other sections of the Forum will open up. Due to spam we have blocked certain IP and email addresses. If you are having difficulty with registration, please email the board admin using the link and request to be added manually. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| V: The Second Generation | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: 7 Aug 2009, 15:55 (82 Views) | |
| Jedikatie | 7 Aug 2009, 15:55 Post #1 |
Rygel's Chief Engineer, Throne Sled Maintenance and Repair
|
Well, I picked up this book about two weeks ago, because the book store finally had it (ironic, since they'd gotten rid of the majority of the sci-fi/fantasy books they had, that they'd have a copy of a book over a year old). I've only just started reading it today, though. I can see why, Chris, you said that you had difficulty getting into it. So far it's been nothing but introductions of new characters, with little tidbits from the original miniseries interspersed into those introductions (like having Dr. Maxwell as one of the narrators on the Resistance's bootleg video, or showing footage from when Donovan accidentally caught Diana eating a guinea pig on tape). I'm really hoping that the action picks up soon, 'cause right now it's not holding my interest very much. I did roll my eyes at the Visitor's "explanation" for why they were taking all our water. They're "purifying" it and will return it, but not until the level of polluted water is down to a minimum, so that it won't "damage" the ecosystem more, causing holes in the ozone layer and the like. Riiiggghht. The people in this book must be total saps to buy that line of bull--but then, they've been told this, no doubt, repeatedly over the years since the Resistance first told everyone that they were stealing out water... I've only read the first four chapters of the book, but right at the moment, I'm hoping the rebooted version on ABC is better than this... but there's still nearly 400 pages to go, so who knows, maybe it improves later on. |
 |
 
|
| Jedikatie | 8 Aug 2009, 09:58 Post #2 |
|
Rygel's Chief Engineer, Throne Sled Maintenance and Repair
|
Oh, I see that they've got Willie (Robert Englund's character) and Harmony the girl whose was sweet on him in the book as well... Took me a minute to realize that that's who the parents of Ted the half-breed was, it's been awhile since I've seen the miniseries... Hmmm... maybe I'll ask Mom to get me the two miniseries of V for my birthday, it'd come in handy watching it again before the new version of the show comes out next year. ETA: And I see that Martin, one of the Visitors' fifth column members is also in the book. Still have no idea what the two (obviously alien) females who aren't Visitors want with the kid who bailed on the Visitor youth (or Teammates as they're called in this book) other than to lead them to the Resistance. They seem to be more interested in him as an individual (at least so far), based on their comments, beyond that need to get in contact with the Resistance. Edited by Jedikatie, 8 Aug 2009, 10:47.
|
|
|
|
| Jedikatie | 9 Aug 2009, 17:59 Post #3 |
|
Rygel's Chief Engineer, Throne Sled Maintenance and Repair
|
Well, I'm pretty sure I know who Diana's "special prisoner" is. And I was amused to see that the Visitors happened to have a data plug (their version of a book, I guess) which was entitled Tectonese biogeometrics... nice little nod to another SF series that Kenneth Johnson was a part of later in '80s. |
|
|
|
| Jedikatie | 9 Aug 2009, 19:47 Post #4 |
|
Rygel's Chief Engineer, Throne Sled Maintenance and Repair
|
Finally... the strange aliens have met up with those surviving Resistance members. It only took til I was nearly halfway through the book for that to happen. And I was correct in my guess in who Diana's "special prisoner" was... |
|
|
|
| Jedikatie | 10 Aug 2009, 10:45 Post #5 |
|
Rygel's Chief Engineer, Throne Sled Maintenance and Repair
|
Sigh... I'm pretty sure that my subsequent guesses about the plot are going to turn out to be correct as well, since I'm up to page 300 (of 443) now, and I've already seen evidence supporting two of my suppositions (which I'd made over 100 pages before) in the book... Really not a good thing when I can figure out what's likely going to happen before I'm even halfway through a book. |
|
|
|
| Jedikatie | 10 Aug 2009, 14:15 Post #6 |
|
Rygel's Chief Engineer, Throne Sled Maintenance and Repair
|
Well, I finished the book. It was... okay. It gave us an ending for the story which began with the original miniseries back in 1983. For the most part, that is, though certain key players were still unaccounted for at the end of the book, and presumably would return to menace Earth later. It took a long time to set up the present day world after 20+ years occupation by the Visitors, as well as introducing or reintroducing characters we knew from the miniseries. That was pretty much the first 150 pages or so of the book. Which is not a good sign (at least to me) when you've spent fully a third of the book just on that sort of thing. The Resistance gained help from a new alien race who "responded" to the cry for help they'd sent some 20 years before. This race, which has various subspecies (kind of like the Xindi of Enterprise), is descended from their worlds' insects. But while the newcomers are trying to find their way to the Resistance (and latch onto some young teenage deserter from the Visitors' Youth--which has been renamed "Teammates"--to lead them to those opposing the Visitors) is interwoven in that first 150 pages, the actual discovery that they are aliens and acceptance by the Resistance to their fight takes maybe 30 pages or so in all, with other storylines interspersed with that one, so it felt rather rushed to me. Also, despite the fact that they were longtime enemies of the Visitors, they were an unknown quantity to be placing quite that much trust into these newfound aliens so quickly, I thought. The rescue of Diana's "special prisoner" was, of course, a trap she had set up for the Resistance. In part to ferret out those members of the fifth column who were still on board her own ship, but also because she knew that once the Resistance discovered who the prisoner was, they wouldn't exclude him from their plans, despite the fact that it would have been far more prudent for them to do so--after all, he'd been left to her tender mercies for some 15+ years, and they had no idea if Mike Donovan (whom her prisoner turned out to be) had been turned by her or not. The Resistance has learned that the Leader of the Visitors was coming to Earth, and they were determined to get their message out, in one last desperate attempt to get the people of Earth to rise up against their oppressors, by eliminating the Leader as well as Diana and various other ship commanders at a big to-do at Candlestick Park in San Fran. But as I said, they made the mistake of allowing Mike to be part of their planning session, and though Mike was not aware of it, Diana had long since planted a camera within him which transmitted the entire session to the mothership. Granted, they didn't get all the audio, but the Resistance had managed to write out large parts of the plan on a dry erase board which the one viewing up on the ship was able to copy notes from, along with the occasional words, so the Visitors were forewarned about all of their plans of attack. Allowing the Resistance to get in close, to make them believe that they would succeed (even though Mike and the others left behind at their HQ--Mike was tortured badly and couldn't walk very well--had discovered that Mike had inadvertently given away their whole scheme and were unable to contact the others to warn them in time), the Visitors sprung their trap and captured virtually all of the surviving Resistance members in one stroke and removed them to the mothership to be put into statis units, where they would be programmed with new duties, along with Martin, a fifth columnist who had been a long time aide of Diana's. Mike, along with the two surviving (of the three) alien allies, and those who remained behind, came up with another scheme after realizing that they did have a massive army already in place to take over the motherships: all the captured humans who'd been placed in stasis over the previous 20 years or so. So they managed to get their own "lesson" taught those in stasis ("ignore all previous instructions, fight the Visitors except those who are wearing yellow stickers, and take over the motherships") which miraculously overrode, in some cases, over 20 years of indoctrination with just one transmission, and then they released all the prisoners on all the motherships to start the worldwide rebellion, while another girl courageously risked her own life to let the people of the world know the truth, straight from Diana's lips, once and for all of what the Visitors had intended, causing mass riots on Earth itself against their oppressors. All of this, of course, is a backdrop to what the alien allies of the Resistance had planned: they were going to end the threat the Visitors posed to their own race once and for all, on Earth. It was just a small matter of utterly destroying all the motherships and the atmosphere of Earth, something the Resistance didn't learn until far, far too late, and was part of their haste in concocting that scheme with the prisoners on the ship, because the insect aliens only promised to call off their assault on Earth if they were provided proof that the Visitors were defeated and that the chemical weapon they had been developing on Earth was totally destroyed. Naturally, of course, the Resistance ends out winning, though some of the Visitors, like Diana, managed to escape their clutches and their whereabouts are unknown at the end of the book. But there are signs that trouble is brewing on the horizon: after all, the leader of the alien alies, who are called Zedti, made several disturbing statements during the speeches by the members of the Resistance after the Visitors were defeated when given the opportunity to speak to the people of Earth. He made it abundantly clear that they likewise were "troubled" by the fact that some of the Visitors had gotten away, and would be remaining to "ensure" that all such people and collaborators were captured, and while supporting Julie's statements about the hopes of the people of Earth to unite together now that they were once more free, he also implied that there were other options that they would use if that did not work out as hoped. Enjoyable enough, once you get past the first third of the book, but not something that I'd personally read again and again. |
|
|
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · Novels · Next Topic » |
4:07 PM Jul 29
