‘Predator: Cold War’ – Nathan Archer (Titan Books)

So back in May, I bought myself a copy of ‘The Complete Predator Omnibus’; mostly because me and my oldest daughter had been getting into the movies and partly because I’d had a rough day and that was only going to end one way if I was silly enough to go into Waterstones ;o) There was another reason though… I’m a completist, especially when it comes to reading books in a series. I’d enjoyed ‘Concrete Jungle’ and that was enough for me to grab a copy of the omnibus when I saw it.

Last month saw me take a little break from the blog but I didn’t stop reading ;o) It was just comfort read stuff that I knew I’d enjoy and there were two stories in the ‘Predator Omnibus’ that I hadn’t started yet so… Off I went. First up was ‘Cold War’ and… I’ve got to say that it wasn’t all that.

Something has fallen from the sky over the Siberian wilderness and soon, decapitated human bodies are littering the surrounding area. The Russian authorities are baffled, but deep within the Pentagon, someone knows that the Predators have returned.

You look at ‘Cold War’ and you can clearly see that once upon a time, someone thought that a great way to throw a new slant on the Predator mythos would be to see what happened if the Predators landed somewhere cold. Because Predators really like it hot so lets turn the temperature right down… Right?

Not really. There are a couple of instances of the kind of action that you want in a ‘Predator’ story and it’s fun but you can’t escape from the fact that what we’re dealing with here is a tale about Predators wanting to be anywhere other than where they are, A little carnage to one side, the Predators are more like ‘Mechanics’, frantically fixing their spaceship so they can get the hell out of Siberia. The Russian contingent are seemingly there just to go through ‘death by Predator’ and to be fair, it’s the same deal for the American Special Forces although they almost turn up too late to be a part of it. And that’s another problem that we have here, timing.

Not a bad concept then, and fun in places, but the overall execution, for me, just doesn’t work. Having said that though… If I hadn’t read ‘Cold War’ then I wouldn’t have gone on to read ‘Big Game’ and that was superb. More on that another time ;o)