Caliban Cove (Resident Evil #2)

Resident Evil: Caliban Cove (Book 2) / 9781781161869 I was a big fan of S.D. Perry's first book in this series (The Umbrella Conspiracy), and Caliban Cove continues to deliver the same level of enjoyment and superb writing. I'll note upfront that I haven't played the video games, so I don't know how well these books match the game-canon, but in terms of zombie novels set in the Umbrella mythos, this series delivers great action, wonderful characterization, and a lot of suspenseful thrills. Caliban Cove picks up after the end of Umbrella Conspiracy: the STARS team members who came back alive from the mansion are on the losing end of a conspiracy theory to cover up the virus spill, and one of the few allies they have decides to launch a raid on another Umbrella facility in order to get the evidence they need to clear their good name. For the raid, he needs the help of Rebecca Chambers, along with a group of genuinely well-characterized folks whose survival is NOT assured since (as far as I know) none of them ever show up in the video games. So the tension is ratcheted up immensely when Anyone Can Die. In terms of the good stuff: S.D. Perry is obviously a very skilled writer. Some franchise novelizations are very poorly written and/or poorly plotted (which, as a dedicated Aliens fan, I know all too well!), but Perry's novels are in my opinion just as good as anything else available at your local bookstore and aren't trying to coast crappy writing on the strength of the franchise label. So even if you're not a hardcore fan of the Resident Evil series, these books are genuinely good zombie/monster novels with a lot of isolation and suspense and creepy thrills to make the books genuinely engaging. The characters do occasionally engage in foolish behavior in order to facilitate the plot, but it's obvious that Perry does her best to handwave these events so that they're not *too* jarring. As far as the bad goes: My biggest disappointment with this series is its total embrace of the idea that evil people are mentally ill and that mental illness equals a dangerous menace to society. I realize that the people in charge of this franchise probably think someone would have to be "crazy" to want to zombify the world, but (a) the movies have thoroughly demonstrated other just as plausible reasons (greed, cruelty, elitism, stupidity, malice, a desire to lord over the ashes of society, etc.) and (b) blaming all this on one "mad scientist" completely obscures the many just-as-dangerous "sane" people who gave him a laboratory and zero oversight in the first place. The book even opens with a quote about how evil really needs mental illness in order to properly thrive ("Through avarice, evil smiles; through insanity, it sings.") and it comes off as unnecessary and jarring. Whether you can swim through this to get at an otherwise good story will vary by reader, I think. If you won't be bothered by the repeated hammering on mentally ill people (most of whom are far more likely to be hurt by non-mentally ill people than they are to harm anyone themselves), then there's a good zombie story in here. Note that these zombies aren't quite your "typical" zombies, as the ones in this book are able to carry and use guns and otherwise respond to stimuli (which I enjoyed for variety's sake but some purists may not). ~ Ana Mardoll

These Resident Evil books were so much fun to read back in the day when they first came out. I'm so so very grateful they're still available for purchase here on Amazon. I will say some of pages look a bit weird, as if they were photocopied but in a way that was in a rush or cheeply done? Like some of the pages look so bad they're hard to read. The originals weren't like that, but I guess with these copies of old books, you just gotta roll with whatever you're given. Still most definitely worth buying and reading. I'm really so very sad the RE books never came to an end, but then again since the games never did it's only fair the books based on them wouldn't as well. It would be very nice if they'd eventually conclude this epic story that's been spanning 30 years now.

Perry does a fantastic job here expanding on the RE world with a completely original story set between RE 1 and 2. I love how she gave us insight into what was happening post Spencer Mansion as well explaining where STARS were during the events of RE2. This book features a cliche bioweapon obsessed villain that is expected of this series, but the actions that this villain takes are particularly disturbing and twisted. There are some tragic moments here that stuck with me and some fantastic character development as usual for Perry's books.

Was a little skeptical going into this, it being an original story and all, but I was happily surprised. For me it was a little slow to start but I ended up loving the whole thing. There are some printing mistakes on my copy which made it kind of hard yo read at times and I'm not a big fan of the cover.

i wanna thank you, the book is very nice i just played the games of Resident evil but never readed the books so be sure i will buy from u again! thank u very much!

I got the book as a gift and they loved it

It's a pretty good book. It was interesting to read an original novel in the series, its pretty great reading. I read only the Resident Evil books by S.D. Perry. Who want's to read a novelization of one of the movies.. I ordered 2-6 + RE0 after I was only halfway through the first book. The first book was so awesome being a novelization of the first RE video game, it answered certain questions and added so much more to the story. This book on the other hand is all original but great in it's own right. I think this Caliban Cove Place is perhaps the same place Ada's Mission takes place in RE4. Its a rocky island, seems almost perfect the way it is described in the book that it is indeed the same place but I don't know, Just my guess.. It's the first mention of zombies that are able to wield and use weapons like in RE4 but then again they weren't exactly zombies in RE4. But even the author admits there are some discrepancies in the timeline of her novels. But that doesn't diminish the awesomeness in any way. Great Book!

Love this book