Aliens – Nightmare Asylum by Steve Perry is a fun science fiction ride!, Is it great literature? No. But man, is this story action-packed. Nightmare Asylum is the sequel to Earth Hive and book two of a trilogy followed up by The Female Wars. In Earth Hive, the aliens take over Earth, with only two humans and an android escaping in a ship. The book has two parts. The first part is the group trapped with limited weapons on a freighter with aliens. The second part is the group meets marines who know Xenomorph aliens. However, they have a madman in charge. He thinks he can control the aliens and save Earth. I worried about the character a couple of times. The bad guy, Spears, is a force. He has a reason behind his actions and sees himself as the good guy. The book has a couple of twists that I liked. The book is pretty well paced. The ending was excellent, and I laughed with glee over what happened. I was very satisfied. I loved this novel a lot more than Earth Hive. The story was full of tense moments. Nightmare Asylum by Steve Perry was published on January 1, 1993.

The plot continues with Wilks, Mitch, and Billie having just made it off Earth before the aliens took over. The transport ship has a destination, but the stowaways don’t know where. They find out that they’re on a transport ship that is shipping frozen bodies with alien infestations to a research base light years away, but the aliens break out before the destination. Leaving the stowaways to fight for their lives. Upon reaching the destination, they find out that a General Spears is training the aliens to fight by using behavioral psychology by burning and threatening the queen to burn her eggs. The plan is to take these fighting aliens and retake Earth. But Spears needs more aliens to be born, so any failure gets sent to the egg hatching room.

What I liked: There’s some good humor. Spears is a truly evil bad guy. His plan and execution are compelling to read. Pretty easy to visualize. Mentions of Ellen Ripley and how it is just rumored that she went to a prison planet. Which is pretty cool since the movie comes out six months after Nightmare Asylum was published. I do like that Ripley has reached folklore status for dealing with aliens. Great action beats, it reminded me of a Matthew Reilly novel in terms of pacing. I like that Spears acknowledges Wilks would have made a good Sargent as he puts up a good fight. I love that Spears is written as a psychopath. He sees himself as the hero. He perceives himself as the only person who can save Earth. I like the way he controls the alien queen. I like that we learn more about the Xenomorph DNA. If an alien queen dies, one of the hive can evolve and be queen. Billie’s scene in outer space with the alien was intense. The final battle scene against Spears was awesome. I do like that characters get banged up in this book, both good guys and bad guys.

What I Disliked: He relies on nightmares a little too much. I know the title is Nightmare Asylum, but I think there were seven or eight, and that was a bit too much. Interesting flashbacks on the villain, I liked the first kill, could have gone without the lost virginity story. The novel takes the pretty girl distraction trope way too far. With Billie getting naked, lying on her back, spreading her legs wide, too far! I did like that the book calls out how stupid the soldiers are who think a woman would act that way.

Recommendation: I would recommend Nightmare Asylum for fans of the Alien film series. There are some pretty great action scenes. Ellen Ripley gets callbacks. She makes an appearance with a tease of more to come at the end. Nightmare Asylum was my second review on readingwithmyeyes.wordpress.com, but I did not review the first book in the trilogy. I always wanted to go back and review the whole trilogy. That is what I plan to do. I will follow up with The Female War soon.

Rating: Aliens – Nightmare Asylum I rated 3.8 stars out of 5.