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While Tim Lebbon’s Alien: Out of the Shadows was a halfway decent stab at recreating one of the greatest SF horror franchises on the page, James A. Moore’s Alien: Sea of Sorrows is thoroughly disappointing.

Perhaps the keyword lies in the word ‘franchise�: it is clear that all of these authors, despite their credentials as accomplished horror writers in their own right, have produced these novels to some corporate plan (call it the Weyland-Yutani way) rather than being told to follow their writerly instincts and let rip on the Alien multiverse (call that the James Cameron way).

So what we end up with here is a perplexing and by-the-numbers rehash of Lebbon’s novel, only set in a much later timeframe. We also see main protagonist Decker nipping from LV178 to Earth and back again, as if it was a brief drive to the corner shop, with Moore riding as roughshod over the laws of physics, let alone logic, as the aliens do over human flesh.

The novel even has the same narrative hook of grunts-for-hire going in blind to some armpit of a planet and slowly being picked off by the creatures that they wholly underestimate. In this instance we have a direct descendant of Ellen Ripley fulfilling the role of the proverbial canary in the coal mine.

Decker shares a telepathic link with the alien creatures (whose grandeur and horror are sorely diminished by Moore constantly referring to them as ‘bugs� and even ‘cockroaches�, which brings to mind a totally different movie, Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers).

Neither the familial link, let alone the telepathy, are explored in any depth, and are therefore rather unconvincing. The ending sees Weyland-Yutani finally procure the live specimens they crave, which is a good set-up for the third novel. Let us hope that Christopher Golden was allowed enough creative control to take this saga in the new direction it deserves.