The Energon Pub

gothsaurus wrote:I think my gripe so far... it seems like a mix of too many universes. War for Cybertron, Movie continuity, and G1. Mixing all of them just feels odd. (Bulkhead on the Ark for example.)

It's not a mixing of universes. It's a mixing of elements from these universes.

Sabrblade wrote:It's a mixing of elements from these universes.

Ha ha. You got me on semantics. True there...

I can't help thinking of the old Reeses peanut butter cup commercial....

(in Ironhide voice) "Aw, Prime. Ya got movie-verse in my G1-verse!"

And you know that's gonna stain.

I don't mind the mixing the verses as long as it's done well. I think it's important to pull elements from as many previous incarnations as possible to make your continuity casserole taste fresh and interesting, even if it is just recycled bits of earlier series. It was nice to see Velocitron and Override, if only Irvine had made them interesting at all. Still I hope some of those concepts find their way into the mainstream G1/BeastWars/Furman pot that aligned seems to be dipping into for all its plot points.

I finished the book a few days ago and the last half is much better than the first, and overall it is much better plotted than Exodus. The Junkion portion is much better, and I found myself kinda liking Irvine's take on the Junkions and Wreck-Gar, when he managed to stick with his speech idioms for them. I liked the Alpha Trion bits in this book okay, despite the the 'vertiginous decent' style of meta-angst that Alpha Trion kept whining about. The Solus Prime stuff is nice, but then again I'm a sucker for them actually EXPLAINING why there are so few fembots. (Can has toy of her naow? With Hammurz?)And it's really funny to have two of the least known fembots get significant parts with nary a sight of Arcee, Elita, or a Blackarachnia.

Nexuspops up to do almost absolutely nothing except give Prime a sword that he uses for two minutes before losing, Prime goes to see Vectorwho tells him absolutely nothing for nearly three pages of dialogue. No less than three super-weapons are found, used, and then junked. And pointless space pirates were pointless!

And what kinda name is AmalgamousPrime? He sounds like something they do to a government issued food product.

Reading it now and all I have to say do far is, "What happened to Ironhide?" He was there on the ship with the rest of the Autobots at the end of Exodus and he's completely gone in Exiles. He was mistakenly mentioned on page 26, (was actually Ratchet, not Ironhide), but that's all I've seen so far.

Did Hasbro tell Alex that since he's dead in the movies now, disregard him in the books, (even though they are different continuities)?

Bleak5170 wrote:Reading it now and all I have to say do far is, "What happened to Ironhide?" He was there on the ship with the rest of the Autobots at the end of Exodus and he's completely gone in Exiles. He was mistakenly mentioned on page 26, (was actually Ratchet, not Ironhide), but that's all I've seen so far.

Did Hasbro tell Alex that since he's dead in the movies now, disregard him in the books, (even though they are different continuities)?

No, he's in there more. It's just kind of odd how the grouping works, and as was said before, some characters are just there to fill a needed role, but not necessarily representative of what we previously thought they were.

I do like that they have written Prowl as more than a logical whiner, his detective personality is a welcome change. I'm about 50 pages from done. It's okay. But I feel like I am watching/reading Armada and Cybertron, not this story that is supposed to be set... wait when is it?

I guess I should just wait for the Sabrblade cliffnotes before trying to actually understand how it all fits with the previous continuities.

tigertracks 24 wrote:But I feel like I am watching/reading Armada and Cybertron, not this story that is supposed to be set... wait when is it?

Post-Exodus, TF: Prime's ancient past.

tigertracks 24 wrote:I guess I should just wait for the Sabrblade cliffnotes before trying to actually understand how it all fits with the previous continuities.

Oh, oh, man, I dunno if I could do that again with this book. I mean, I just finished reading it a few days ago and...

This book is just so darn confusing! As soon as I finished reading it, I thought, " ...That's it? That's how it ends? ...What did I just read?"

I mean, I could barely make heads or tails of the whole Junkion story. The entire book's second half was barely comprehensible! I got a basic idea of what was going on, but there were too many things crammed in that, together, just made no sense whatsoever!

Like, take the pirates, for example. These "Star Seekers". WHO WERE THEY?!!! WHAT POINT DID THEY HAVE IN THE STORY?!! What did they ADD to it?! WHY were they necessary?! I'm sure the next book will explain their cause... but would it have killed Alex Irvine to tell us about this in THIS book?!

Argh! And the spelling errors! Come on! "Autobtots," "spinnning", these are grade school mistakes!

The Velocitron part of the story was okay, but... dull. My biggest complaint was the uneven length of each chapter. Chapter 1, six pages. Chapter 2, four pages. Chapter 3, seven pages. Chapter 4, THIRTY-THREE PAGES!!! And it continued throughout the book. A few short chapters with a ginormous chapter popping up out of nowhere! Again and AGAIN!

I'd have to read this book again to get it, but frankly, I really don't want to right now! I could barely stand it! Too much nonsense went into this book coupled with some very tedious exposition and really vapid action. I know this is a premature rating, but I'm calling this book a "C-".

I think your rating may be a bit generous.

tigertracks 24 wrote:

Bleak5170 wrote:Reading it now and all I have to say do far is, "What happened to Ironhide?" He was there on the ship with the rest of the Autobots at the end of Exodus and he's completely gone in Exiles. He was mistakenly mentioned on page 26, (was actually Ratchet, not Ironhide), but that's all I've seen so far.

Did Hasbro tell Alex that since he's dead in the movies now, disregard him in the books, (even though they are different continuities)?

No, he's in there more. It's just kind of odd how the grouping works, and as was said before, some characters are just there to fill a needed role, but not necessarily representative of what we previously thought they were.

Ah gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up. It seems to me like these books are kind of along the same lines as the video games, (War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron), and use most of the characters seen in the movies, (O.P., Bumblebee, Jazz, Ironhide, Ratchet), and other recent TF media such as Animated, (Bulkhead, Prowl).

Bleak5170 wrote:

tigertracks 24 wrote:

Bleak5170 wrote:Reading it now and all I have to say do far is, "What happened to Ironhide?" He was there on the ship with the rest of the Autobots at the end of Exodus and he's completely gone in Exiles. He was mistakenly mentioned on page 26, (was actually Ratchet, not Ironhide), but that's all I've seen so far.

Did Hasbro tell Alex that since he's dead in the movies now, disregard him in the books, (even though they are different continuities)?

No, he's in there more. It's just kind of odd how the grouping works, and as was said before, some characters are just there to fill a needed role, but not necessarily representative of what we previously thought they were.

Ah gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up. It seems to me like these books are kind of along the same lines as the video games, (War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron), and use most of the characters seen in the movies, (O.P., Bumblebee, Jazz, Ironhide, Ratchet), and other recent TF media such as Animated, (Bulkhead, Prowl).

It is true they are throwing all different kinds of characters together who were not previously together. Like we have minicons, and minicon weapons, Velocitron, Ransack and Overdrive, Axer, Wreckgar, Slipstream, and others who are now getting smooshed together with G1 characters who are not G1 characters anymore.

It's all very confusing. Even Sabrblade, who knows everything, is confused. As I hear it, all these incarnations together in EXODUS and then EXILES are supposed to be headed towards TF Prime being the future, so Bulkhead, Ratchet, the non-speaking Bbee, and Prime all make sense. We don't yet know how others will gel with them, like Arcee, and why they become such a small group in PRIME (forgive me I have only seen an episode here or there of Prime, and have not seen the beginning yet).

tigertracks 24 wrote:It's all very confusing. Even Sabrblade, who knows everything, is confused. As I hear it, all these incarnations together in EXODUS and then EXILES are supposed to be headed towards TF Prime being the future, so Bulkhead, Ratchet, the non-speaking Bbee, and Prime all make sense. We don't yet know how others will gel with them, like Arcee, and why they become such a small group in PRIME (forgive me I have only seen an episode here or there of Prime, and have not seen the beginning yet).

Oh, I get the continuity and character. That I understand.

What I don't understand was the organization and consistency of Exiles's story. Did the planet Junkion get blown up or just get damaged? Was the Nemesis above, below, or in the middle of the pit? Who fought who in the final battle? Why do the Star Seekers want revenge on the Cybertronians? Was the Ark floating out in space, near Junkion, or set on Junkion's surface during the final battle? What happened to Makeshift? Who was part of which team units of the Autobots? Exactly how damaged was the Ark (its frailty varied at different parts of the story, sometimes it was near-destoryed, others it was functional enough fly on its own power). Why were there a bunch of floating wrecks near Solus Prime's forge/tomb?

I'm sure some of these questions will get answered next book, but again, why not answer them in THIS BOOK?!!

I'd have to read this book again to get it, but frankly, I really don't want to right now! I could barely stand it! Too much nonsense went into this book coupled with some very tedious exposition and really vapid action. I know this is a premature rating, but I'm calling this book a "C-".

And this is the essence of Transfandom. We will read, and even re-read, a book that we HATE simply because it's part of canon and is thus an artifact in need of studying, analyizing and cross referencing.

They really knew what they were doing when they made Orion Pax a librarian in the new aligned continuity.

I finished reading Exiles a few days ago (okay, maybe a week, I read it in one day... ), and I found it confusing too, but at the time I thought it was because English is not my native language. Guess I was wrong, apparently it IS confusing.

Velocitron-part was decent, and not much confusing, though it's still mystery how and when Decepticons landed. First they were in that hall or something, and few chapters later they landed again on the surface and were treated like no one had seen them before. Did I miss something or what?

Junkion-part, however... What a mess! Characters kept appearing and disappearing out of nowhere, at one point Junkion got destroyed completely, and in the next scene there's still parts of it floating in the space. I had no idea where the Ark or the Nemesis exactly were, and apparently I missed the part where Optimus got to the Requiem Blaster.

And don't get me started on those Star Seekers.

However, I kind of enjoyed Exiles, but it might be just because in its cover reads "Transformers". If not... well... I would have probably stopped reading after reading the first half.

Zequem wrote:Velocitron-part was decent, and not much confusing, though it's still mystery how and when Decepticons landed. First they were in that hall or something, and few chapters later they landed again on the surface and were treated like no one had seen them before. Did I miss something or what?

I was confused about that too. Until I realized that the first landing wasn't made by the Decepticons, but by the Star Seekers. You can tell it was them later on when they arrive at Junkion and use the Universal Greeting and demand to know if there were Cybertronians there like how they did on Velocitron. The confusion comes from them being mistaken for the Decepticons by the Velocitronians.

The Decepticons show up for real later on, after the Star Seekers had left and the damage from their fight earlier is noticed by the Deceps.

Zequem wrote:Junkion-part, however... What a mess! Characters kept appearing and disappearing out of nowhere, at one point Junkion got destroyed completely, and in the next scene there's still parts of it floating in the space. I had no idea where the Ark or the Nemesis exactly were, and apparently I missed the part where Optimus got to the Requiem Blaster.

Aside from Optimus getting to the Blaster (I recall him jumping towards it or something), TRUER WORDS HAVE NEVER BEEN SPOKEN!!!

Zequem wrote:And don't get me started on those Star Seekers.

WHY were these guys necessary?!!! My only guess is that they might be Quintessons who want revenge for their loss of Cybertron to the Cybertronians after the Age of Wrath, but there's nothing cemented to really support this idea of mine.

Zequem wrote:However, I kind of enjoyed Exiles, but it might be just because in its cover reads "Transformers". If not... well... I would have probably stopped reading after reading the first half.

Completely agree!

I mean, especially for the Junkion part, there was a severe lack of sensory details of setting and locations--and when there were, the descriptions made little sense to me--that I could not visualize an adequate mental image of what it was this book was telling me to image looking at. I REALLY hope they made some comic form of the Junkion part, as there's no way I could get a fix on what the environments and event on that planet looked like.

Sabrblade wrote:

Zequem wrote:Velocitron-part was decent, and not much confusing, though it's still mystery how and when Decepticons landed. First they were in that hall or something, and few chapters later they landed again on the surface and were treated like no one had seen them before. Did I miss something or what?

I was confused about that too. Until I realized that the first landing wasn't made by the Decepticons, but by the Star Seekers. You can tell it was them later on when they arrive at Junkion and use the Universal Greeting and demand to know if there were Cybertronians there like how they did on Velocitron. The confusion comes from them being mistaken for the Decepticons by the Velocitronians.

The Decepticons show up for real later on, after the Star Seekers had left and the damage from their fight earlier is noticed by the Deceps.

Ooh, now I get it. Thanks for clearing that up! I kind of realized there was something fishy about in the "first" landing because Decepticons names weren't used, but never could I have figured it was actually the Star Seekers.

Zequem wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

Zequem wrote:Velocitron-part was decent, and not much confusing, though it's still mystery how and when Decepticons landed. First they were in that hall or something, and few chapters later they landed again on the surface and were treated like no one had seen them before. Did I miss something or what?

I was confused about that too. Until I realized that the first landing wasn't made by the Decepticons, but by the Star Seekers. You can tell it was them later on when they arrive at Junkion and use the Universal Greeting and demand to know if there were Cybertronians there like how they did on Velocitron. The confusion comes from them being mistaken for the Decepticons by the Velocitronians.

The Decepticons show up for real later on, after the Star Seekers had left and the damage from their fight earlier is noticed by the Deceps.

Ooh, now I get it. Thanks for clearing that up! I kind of realized there was something fishy about in the "first" landing because Decepticons names weren't used, but never could I have figured it was actually the Star Seekers.

Which further supports my baffling as to why Irvine/Hasbro felt it was necessary to introduce these characters if they played little to no role in this story.