Caliban Cove (Resident Evil #2)

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.

Resident Evil: Caliban Cove (Book 2) / 9781781161869I 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

Great book , I recommend this book.

Some pages had an issue were unreadable with text words that were fading. I replaced it but same issue. Must be a print issue. Besides that. Good read

The Resident Evil novel collection by S.D. Perry are a wonderful addition to my RE collection. I’m still putting together my RE universe wall so it’s a work in progress and until my other portraits arrive. The books arrived in excellent condition. I can’t wait to start reading them.

Arrived a few hours ahead of schedule so that was cool! As far as the book itself goes I'd say it was really well done. Honestly I wasn't expecting much since I had never read an original SD Perry book but I feel like this was even better than RE1. The main reason for this is because while the original story of RE1 is good, you know how it ends. With this, anything can happen. All the characters besides Rebecca are new and thus have the potential for dying. This makes you feel more for them since they aren't immortal like the characters from book one.As far as the story goes it's pretty good. It has its flaws here and there. Most are very minor, the only real flaw (and this is just an opinion), is the pacing at the end. It really seems rushed Compared to the perfect pacing the rest of the book has.Aside from that, this book is really good. If you're an RE fan, pick it up!

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!

Having never read these books myself, I can only tell you how I feel about them as a parent.I love them.My son is reading again. When he was little, he used to love reading. But as he got older, he started hating it. Imagine my disappointment when, as a writer, my son doesn't like to read. Fortunately, it was just a matter of finding a subject matter that he liked. He loves playing the video game version of these books, so I thought I'd pick one up as a lark and see if he'd read it.He didn't put it down for a solid week and read the whole thing cover to cover. I'm so pleased.As a parent, I'm not as concerned with the subject matter (for the most part) as I am with the reading itself. If these books can interest my son in reading, then they are worth ever penny of the list price.