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Autobot Sarge wrote:I enjoyed the book. Yes the human characters were generic and predictable but the Transformer personalities were spot on. Is it the greatest book ever...no, but how often do we get a real book based on Transformers-enjoy it.

SPOILERS!
I don't find it so hard to believe that it took the Decepticons a while to get to earth. Starscream, Blackout, and Frenzy were left in a states needing considerable repairs-which the novel referenced several times that getting parts for repairs was troublesome. There is also the fact that Starscream is slightly different that his traditional self in that he exercises patience when he has to, which rounds him out very well since the story has all his other traditional traits. Between repairs, diffusing the other Decepticons inquiries about the possibilities of Megatron, planning the way for him to get the Allspark without the others while conceiling Megatrons location, and gaining back the confidence of the other Decepticons he has a lot to do. The book was very clear in explaining several times that our years were absolutely nothing but instants to the Transformers given thier lifespan, I can see 39 years as feasible-and to a transformer immediate. Also aren't the Decepticons there before Bumblebee anyways? Do we have a time they landed?

That goes some way to explaining it.

If the Decepticons did land on Earth long before Bumblebee, though, why didn't they go active until 2007? It is possible that they were acting 'underground', stealthily, but then why go public in 2007?

Almost done with the book(Like maybe one chapter left), and I've been reading it for like a week now. That's easily the quickest I've EVER made it through a book, even considering reading for Classes and such! Granted, it's a relatively easy read, but I do find the Story quite engaging, and much to my surprise, it seems to coexist with the IDW Prequel stuff as well! Can't wait for the Movie novel to come out, because I KNOW that this will end on a cliffjumper-I mean cliffHanger(I couldn't resist). Looking past Alan Dean Foster's lack of interest in Transformers, and the decidedly Sloppy editing in places, I'd still give the book a pretty decent score; if not for the Sci-Fi epic-ness of it. The space battles between the individual characters are of a sort I don't recall EVER seeing in Transformers. And, as I suspected, there's not too much Talk of actual TRANSFORMING at all- the whole thing is Purely character-driven. Good enough for me. Anyhoo, buy it! Read it!

First Off, There is still a few dozen pages of the book left that I didn't Spoil, so the end of my review is not the end of the book.

According to the prequal comic, bumblebee raced off after megatron with the rest on cybertron.
Then there was a a gap in time.
Then the book picks up and bumblebee is on the ark with the rest.
What happened in that time? Whatever you want to have happened, because there is no canonical outline of events.

I, personally, feel that Prime stopped Bumblebee from going on what would be a suicide mission before he got in to deep. Prime made him an Ark crew member and as a team they made out to find Megs and the Allspark.

Second, Starscream downloaded the complete database of Ghost One. He would know where earth was and go straight there.

No, He wouldn't and here's why. Apollo 11, which launched simultaneously with Ghost One only had 2K of RAM and 36K of hard-wired memory. How thorough of a star chart did they have, seriously? My Avatar is 18K...

Besides, is it really that important?

^ Valid point there.

And let's not forget the fact that the Ghost One went farther then anticipated. So really, how could Starscream really decipher the charts?

Can you find your way to Cuba if you have a map of Idaho?

Talon wrote:I found the book pretty dissapointing actually. I'm not the biggest fan (I know next to nothing past G1). But basically the characters in the book were barely described. The only one who's character traits really come through would be Starscream (and I found it was done quite well). Like another person said, the rest of the transformers are quite generic.

There were a few plot holes in the book. I think the biggest one would be the ending.

**SPOILER**



If starscream downloaded their ENTIRE databank (every bit and byte) and was pissed all to hell at them, you think he would take a little less then 38 years to get to earth. It said specifically that they had star charts in their database, so it wouldn't be too hard to figure out where Earth actually was. So therefore you'd think the decepticons would have been on earth like the day later. (Considering the "primitive" humans travelled to where the transformers were in a matter of minutes)

**SPOILER ENDS**


Personally I found the comic gave a much better background and explained more in the first 2 comics then dean whatever his name is did within 300.

Also did you guys read the interview with him that's posted here? http://www.seibertron.com/people/interv ... view_id=32
I mean it sounded like he didn't even care about the series itself anyway. Kinda like here's some money go write a 300 page book basing it on these 6 pages we're going to give you.

agree. the comic was way better. i mean if mega broke BB's voice box and then got repaired and headed to earth why didnt the comic mention about what happen with GHOST and the ark with the decepticons encountering the autobots? it got me confused.

As the other summaries state in more detail: Sector Seven uses the opportunity of the Apollo’s launch to blast their own experiment into space: Ghost One, a Decepticon ship reverse-engineered from Megatron. This ship runs into trouble when a wormhole throws it to a desolate planet in the far reaches of the galaxy. They run into bigger trouble when their ship attracts the attention of its originators and draws the warring Autobots and Decepticons both right to them. It was readable, and a good way to kill an afternoon, but too short and too vague to really get me excited.

Thoughts? 1969 is bordering dangerously close to 2007 in places, but nothing was so deliberately anachronistic I couldn’t think of potential explanations. There is a disproportionate amount of women in Sector Seven’s military and space program, but that could be because they had little chance of getting involved in the mainstream programs and were funneled into alternatives. Kinnear talks about his service in Vietnam as if it were in the distant past when in fact, the war would have just ended, but it’s possible he served in the beginning and then got yanked somewhere else. I do think the characters would’ve felt more like people if they’d addressed this stuff.

I also felt the humans’ story was too predictable. You can probably guess what happens to the character who mentions he’s close to retirement, and where the crew of Ghost One is going to wind up (because everything has to be tied up neat and clean so nothing in Ghosts of Yesterday will affect any of the other tie-ins). Some people find predictability comfortable. I. HATE. IT.

Fortunately, the Transformers’ end of things was interesting enough to keep me reading. Bumblebee landing in a nest of carnivorous Slinkies was great; seriously, the atmosphere and Bumblebee’s analytical reactions almost felt like something out of Metroid (the whole book coulda been about that and I wouldn‘t have complained). There were all sorts of clues about the planet having been inhabited by intelligent life, and not many about what may have happened to them (I doubt the Slinkies could’ve gotten them all, especially since it was hinted pretty strongly they had “domesticated” them somewhat). I really wished for more about this.

Starscream continues his time-honored tradition… not of trying to wrest leadership from Megatron, though he does that… but of stealing every blasted scene he’s in. He’s dead-on in-character. Even better, there’s a little easter egg that may or may not be intentional but is hilarious either way: Walker, at one point, says Starscream “sounds like a used car salesman!” Similarly, Optimus Prime is Optimus Prime, period. However, I do feel the other characters suffered, particularly Jazz and Ratchet. I have trouble envisioning Ratchet charging his enemies screaming “die!” and, excepting a few IC lines, Jazz’s dialogue could’ve been coming from anybody. And the mute Bumblebee has a line of dialogue, and though I suppose I can pass it off as something he transmitted over his communicator, it was in quotation marks.

So, yeah… it was okay. I loved the mysterious planet and most of what happened on it, could give or take a lot of the rest. I can't say how it relates to the comic, which I haven't read, but as it's own little thing, it's not bad. It's better than Hardwired, but it's no Legends.

Here's some info I collected from the book and comic, though ONE thing doesent add up. But from the videos at sectorseven.org seems to be a little off as well.


**SPOILER**

- 1,000 years ago:
The AllSpark was launched from Cybertron to Earth. Megatron follows and gets trapped in ice.

- 1879
Megatron if found in the Arctic

- 1899
The group that will become Sector 7 starts to dig Megatron out of the ice.

- 1902
The group that will become Sector 7 finds the AllSpark.

- 1935
Sector 7's Hoover Dam base is finished.
[MEGATRON IS TO BE TRANSPORTED THERE IN THE FALL OF THAT YEAR]

- 1969
The Ghost 1 is lunched from the Arctic on it's first mission.
[MEGATRON IS TRANSPORTED TO S7's HOOVER DAM BASE]

- 2003
Bumblebee leaves Cybertron in search of Megatron and the Allspark. Sector 7 spots Bumblebee on Mars.

Bumblebee takes an "Earth Form".

Starscream, Blackout and Barricade land on Mars. The Beagle 2 Mars Rover goes "missing".

**END SPOILER**

It's possible that Megatron was due to be transported to the Hoover Dam in 1939, but for whatever reason the transfer didn't go ahead, and was thus delayed until 1969.

i got the book. its hard considering i don't read

Heavy B wrote:i got the book. its hard considering i don't read

Do you mean you can't read, or you can but just don't?